This massive Italian epic was originally produced for television and it shows. This isn't art, it's camp. Melodrama leaps off the screen at every predictable turn. As unlikely as Forrest Gump and just about as contrived, it's a grand mess of 1 (and occasionally 2) dimensional characters who seem incapable of taking a step back and evaluating their lives.
I found myself thinking a lot about Bergman's Scenes from a Marriage during the 6 torturous hours of La Meglio Gioventù. Some people love these completely clichéd and horrendously oversold formulaic dramas, but I think they're as poor a representation of life as soap opera. In alleging to portray everything, almost nothing genuine is accomplished.
A.O. Scott points eloquently to two characters' "moral allergy to their own feelings and to the messy bonds that connect them to their lovers and families" in his review of several years ago. Excuse me? Some motive would have been nice here. A tendency to treat loved ones with unexplained cruelty isn't dramatic, it's inane.
Scott suggests that this film's argument is that "a commitment to human dignity is ideology enough". What calamitous quietism.
La Meglio gioventù
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