One of the things that stood out to me from the first part of this film was Giorgia as a character. From the prompts on the worksheet, I initially described her character with just the word "crazy". After watching the film further, I quickly realized this was too speedy of a judgement of her character. Nicola's interactions with Giorgia acted as a way for the viewer to understand Giorgia with more depth. Specifically, I think the scene where Nicola ask Matteo what's wrong with her, Matteo replies by saying "She's just crazy," and Nicola says "No, she isn't. She has intelligent eyes." This scene helped to open my perspective of Giorgia as a character. Following this scene, we see more examples of how Giorgia is not a character to just write off as a crazy person, like when we learn she has many religious things memorized or that she can form complete sentences if needed. Her reactions to Matteo reading her notebook as well as her screaming "Don't touch me" both serve to show that maybe she isn't crazy, but just scarred and still afraid. I Initially perceived these actions as her just having a mental disorder, but after gaining a new perspective on her character through Nicola, it shifts my perspective to think that maybe she is just traumatized from something in her past, and that I was too quick to judge why she is the way she is. I hope that Giorgia comes back at some point in the movie; she was an interesting character that engaged me in the movie because of how in-depth her character is.
Something that made the biggest impression on me from the second part of this film is Giulia's character. I never liked Giulia as a character from when she was first introduced. In her first scene, she starts playing the piano out of nowhere for a large crowd of talkative people, which to me is self-centered attention-seeking behavior. From there, we see her doing things like arguing with Matteo the very first time they meet, keeping her daughter in the house with cigarette smoke and terrorists, as well as just showing general disdain for everything around her aside from her terrorist friends. To me, her only good quality, as described by Matteo in the film, is that she plays the piano well. When she decides to sell it (even after Nicola's father tries to encourage her to play and tells her she plays beautifully), it becomes a point of no return for her character because she no longer has any redeeming qualities. Giulia and Nicola also first met because she was playing the piano, and so her selling it also forsakes their relationship. I think Giulia's character is made intentionally unlikable by the director because nothing she did throughout her time on screen ever really made me like her, but I wonder why the director chose to make her so unlikable. My best guess is that the director wanted to progress Nicola's character, since he is usually a very happy guy, and so he gives him a terrible relationship that could only end in failure so that he is forced to reconcile with his negative emotions.
One of the things I think Best of Youth did most beautifully was the portrayal of self. I personally believe that, although people have the capacity to make change in their lives, no one really does. People can do things like working out to change their physical appearance or to get healthier, which of course is a good thing, but this does not change who they really are as a person. I think that Best of Youth portrays this well by bringing up the idea that all people are "split," meaning that although people can emotionally and dynamically shift as time goes on, the shifts they make were always within the capacity of this "split," meaning that people do not really change who they are; they just move along the spectrum that is them as life progresses. One example of this in a character from the movie is Giulia as a character. Throughout the movie, we see Giulia grapple with her sense of being split between a desire for motherhood and a desire for terrorism. She does indeed move around within this spectrum throughout the movie; before she gave birth we see her acting more towards her violent political activism side, and after Sara's birth we see her start to care more for her daughter. We continue to see Giulia grapple between these two ideas all the way through the end of the movie, and there are many examples of this struggle such as when Giulia was in prison, when Giulia "visits" her daughter in the museum, when Giulia and Sara reconnect when Sara is an adult, etc. All this goes to show that, although Giulia is able to make conscious decisions about how she acts, the choices she makes in the movie are consistently limited to who she is as a person, meaning that, in a sense, she never really changed who she was. Another example of this concept of not really changing is Matteo. Throughout the film, Matteo struggles with finding emotional connections with people. Despite many attempts he makes at reaching out to people emotionally, he never really emotionally connects with anyone because that's just who he is. You'll notice from this that Matteo was actually the one person in the movie that tried to change who he was as a person, but he wasn't able to and committed suicide as a result. This stance on people not being able to really change who they are might be seen as depressing, but in reality I think it's the opposite. In my opinion, it's freeing to know that there is no point in attempting to change who you are and what makes you, you, and that staying true to oneself is the most raw and true form of human expression. That, to me, is beautiful and one of the most beautifully done things in Best of Youth.
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