Auf alles, was uns glücklich macht

I bet everyone in their 50's will find connection with at least one character in this lovely Italian film.

This is a movie about life.

Don't expect to feel thrills or emotional peaks when watching it. However I was on the verge of crying during most of the movie, and at the same time was similing constantly - that's life!

It's so sentimental to watch how our lives take different paths, but the emotions remain intact. How time washes away all the anger. How we make mistakes, but love is above them.

This movie is not the typical movie, but it's for sure the kind I love to watch.

10* and my first IMDb review, which I felt I needed to write, since the current rating the movie is having, is not at all reflecting its worth.

"Gli anni più belli" portraits 40 years in the life of four friends whose personal stories intersects recent history. On the steps of Lelouch "Bolero" and Scola's "C'eravamo tanto amati", which is explicitly quoted. Although the movie develops on the edge of mannerism and can be fairly accused of lacking subtlety in some of its topic scenes (as often with Muccino's work), its message is true and powerful: the best years are the ones we dare to live fully. Love is not the romantic fantasy that happens to you in Hollywood movies, it is not a commodity, but it is an ongoing practice of care, respect, forgiveness for others. Connection is the answer. All actors deliver great performances (Ramazzotti in particular). The movie is packed with quotations from Italian classics which will please movie lovers.

Italian cinema doesn't need big productions or state-of-the-art technology to make good films. It is not a defect, but a virtue. A good script, good actors, efficient directing and editing and, practically, it's done. Said like that, it even seems easy, because that's the idea we get when we watch some of these movies. The last one that left me this idea was Gli anni più belli (Gabriele Muccino, 2020).

For about two hours, we follow 40 years in the lives of four friends, Giulio, Paolo, Ricardo and Gemma, marked by many disagreements and many other encounters. The intimate life episodes are framed in the social and political context that has shaped Italy over the last four decades, adding value to the film.

But what really catches our attention is the imitation of life as it is, with conquests and disappointments; difficulties and successes; expectations that change according to reality; encounters with the lost hope; questioning and incessant search for happiness, which, even unconscious, is always latent.

If there is anything in the story that we can learn from, it is to realize that being successful may not translate into obtaining great profits or prominent positions, that happiness is not accounted for in monetary values, that the things that make us happy are really the simplest things (although it is a commonplace) and that it is on them that we should focus, otherwise we will see life pass without us having made it our own.

And, as everything is cyclical, the last sequence shows a couple of teenagers who, like so many others before them, are starting their journey, to, in the end, probably, reach the same conclusion, although with diverse life experiences. This also seems to alert us that life is too short to be spent with people you don't like or doing something that doesn't mean anything to you, but I guess though too obvious, it's something each and every one of us will only learn by living.

What a film. It's about love, honest and sincere love. About mistakes, forgiveness, desire, friendship and love again. A film that has touched me incredibly.