Quartile rating: 8.5/10 · 1 rating
After a fateful encounter in the summer of 1966, the lifepaths of two brothers from a middle-class Roman family diverge, intersecting with some of the most significant events of postwar Italian history in the following decades.
The Best of Youth is an extraordinary six-hour Italian epic that traces two brothers across four decades of Italian history—from the floods of Florence to the Years of Lead terrorism and the Tangentopoli scandals. Its plot is a genuine achievement in long-form storytelling, weaving personal and national history with rare emotional intelligence and coherence; the scope and execution earn a 4. The acting ensemble is uniformly superb, with Luigi Lo Cascio and Alessio Boni delivering deeply inhabited, career-defining performances across decades of screen time. The ending—bittersweet, earned, and quietly devastating—resolves the family saga with moving grace and earns full marks. Cinematography is competent and occasionally beautiful but primarily functional, reflecting its origins as a RAI television miniseries; it serves the story without distinctive visual ambition. Novelty is solid but not exceptional—the multi-decade family saga is a well-established form, and while the specifically Italian historical canvas gives it a singular flavor, it doesn't reinvent the genre so much as execute it at the highest level.