D.fter the success of Sky At home everyone is fine – The series, Gabriele Muccino returns to the small screen tonight with the first TV – at 21.25 on Rai 1 – de The best years, latest film for cinema released in 2020, a month before the outbreak of the pandemic. An almost “monumental” work which embraces, thanks to its characters, forty years of Italian history.
With an all-star cast composed of Pierfrancesco Favino, Kim Rossi Stuart, Claudio Santamaria And Micaela Ramazzottithe film also pays homage to one of the masters of Italian cinema, Ettore Scolawhile remaining a profound work steeped in many themes dear to the director, like couple relationships and the collapse of bourgeois ideals.
All perfectly orchestrated by the mastery of an often criticized director but certainly one of the very few to cultivate his personal and recognizable style.
Below, the trailer for the film
The best years: the plot of the movie
Rome, 1982. Giulio (Pierfrancesco Favino) and Paolo (Kim Rossi Stuart) they are sixteen. During a confrontation with the police, they meet Riccardo (Claudio Santamaria) who is saved only thanks to the boys, who have him taken to the hospital, calling him “Survivor” from that moment on. That day marks the beginning of a great friendshipintended for last a lifetime.
During the summer, the three meet a girl, Gemma (Micaela Ramazzotti) and Paolo ends up falling in love with it. But when her mother, gravely ill, passes away, Gemma moves to Naples.
From left, Favino, Ramazzotti and Rossi Stuart
Several years later, while passing through Rome, Gemma meets Paolo by chance and decides to escape from Naples for go live with him. But, at some point, she and Giulio start dating in secret and friendship that had cemented the group begins to shatter. As the world is shocked by numerous historical and social changes, Riccardo knows Anna (Emma Brown)Giulio marries the daughter of a politician and Paolo fights to become a full professor.
Everything seems to have changed in their lives. But years later – between failed marriages, children and new professional adventures – the four friends will eventually find each otherremembering the best years of their livesspent together.
A profoundly “Muccinian” work
If many, between public and critics, have suffered “Liquidated” the film as a kind of reboot of the cult of Ettore Scola We had loved each other so muchto be honest The best years looks more like a compendium of all the elements that always characterize Muccino’s films. Including that unbridled vitalityalways on the verge of kitsch, which guides the hand of the director and his camera.
Emma Marrone in a scene from the film.
In the film Muccino condenses four decades of history in just over two hours of film, reworking themes already treated in the past but with greater maturity. Thus, the screamed betrayals return The last Kissthe bourgeois cages of Remember me and the pleasure of the chorus of At home everyone is fine. But the director’s eye has become more adult, almost paternal. And above all able to resize psychological excesses of its characters.
So, if in the past Muccino allowed himself to be devoured by events together with its protagonists, today it chooses a healthy detachment without however abandoning them to their fate. And it is this love, and this challenge to the conventions of life and genre, that ennobles even the most cloying moments. Making forgiveness for some narrative forcing too many and a handful of clichés.
The film thus becomes aalmost unique work in the Italian panorama current, capable of linking nostalgia, the value of friendship and the historical and social changes that affect the lives of all of us. Giving birth to a sentimental layered fresco And built with care for involve Italy and its change in the lives of each character.
Claudio Baglioni’s song
After so many years without releasing unreleased songs, Claudio Baglioni And returned to creating music under the invitation of Muccino. Who specifically asked him for a song to summarize the mood of the film in a few minutes. Thus, the freedom of adolescence, its clarity and vitality are at the center of the piece – which is called, in fact, The best years – of the Roman singer-songwriter, touched with the usual delicacy and depthalong with the value of friendship.
The best yearsas Muccino himself said, focuses on “circle of life that characterizes all existence. From when we are sixteen to what we become over the next few decades, with the children who will start again from where we started“.
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