"Best of Youth" at the Clark, Sept. 9-10

This you must see. Simple as that. The Best of Youth was not just the best-reviewed film of 2005, but an enduring classic in the making, on a par with the Godfather films or Visconti’s Leopard, or any favorite family saga of historical sweep.

I cannot contain my enthusiasm for this cinematic masterwork, so I will share it by offering a rare opportunity to immerse yourself in six hours of fascinating family dynamics, and forty years of recent Italian history, from the Florence floods of 1966 to a sunny Tuscan villa today, with sojourns in Rome, Turin, and Sicily along the way.

As a very special encore to my summer film series at the Clark, “Brother to Brother,” there will be a free screening of The Best of Youth in two 3-hour halves on the weekend of September 9-10, part one on Saturday, part two on Sunday, both starting at 1:00 pm.

La Meglio Gioventù was originally produced as a miniseries for Italian television, which declined to show it, so it was introduced as a film at Cannes in 2003, where it won an award. A brief U.S. theatrical release in 2005 landed it at the top of several critic’s Top 10 lists, and earned it the year’s highest rating from Metacritic.com -- a score of 89, where 80 indicates “universal acclaim.”

Time Out, by far the most reliable of annual film guides, praises The Best of Youth for a “sure sense of time and place” and avers that the “complex but lucid script and the visceral depth and subtlety of the performances result in classical storytelling of the highest order.”

I won’t give away anything about character or plot -- you deserve to discover it for yourself, unfolding and enfolding as life is lived -- and you must bring your full attention to bear. The fact that there is not a recognizable name or face in the cast or crew of this film only contributes to its air of perfect realism, at the same time it offers enough operatic melodrama to draw tears from a stone. The film elicits a compulsive absorption well suited to marathon viewing -- six hours pass more rapidly than your average two-hour movie. You can’t get enough of it -- I’ve been eager to watch it through again since the moment I got to the end.

Trust me, this film is worth devoting a weekend to. But if you can’t make it to the Clark, I remind you that all DVDs shown there can subsequently be borrowed from the Milne Public Library in Williamstown. Or put it on your Netflix queue. Any way you can -- see The Best of Youth! It really is the best.