The Best of Carvaggio

It took me a while (basically two years) to getting around to watching The Best of Youth, and I am glad that I did. Its origins as a TV movie are often evident, but that doesn't diminish its power as a story. Visually, it is quite variable -- sometimes bland, sometimes gorgeous, sometimes nearly inept with things like projected backgrounds during car driving scenes, clearly fake beards (nothing beats the real thing) or badly applied gray spray paint on heads to indicate the passing of the years. But none of that diminishes the sweep of it and its ability to pull me in slowly and subtly. Its theme, some have suggested, is not that we are at our best in youth but if we are lucky we take the best, our idealism and hopes, with us in the years ahead to battle cynicism.

And to have Alessio Boni to feast one's eyes on for most of the six hours is, well...is it too late to change my ticket from Barcelona to Florence? He managed to creep up on me slowly. Though not bad with longer hair at the left in the beginning, his transformation after the first third or so is rather breathtaking. The fact that he just filmed a new Caravaggio biopic as the title character with Jordi Molla playing a benefactor/priest is almost too much for the mind and heart to handle. I wish Jordi would go back to playing wayward bisexual husbands instead of sloppy English speaking drug dealers. I love you sloppy, Jordi, but go back to doing it in your mother-tongue.

Any way you slice it, I've not seen someone quite as gifted at playing the gorgeous, doomed poetic soul with quite the sweep of Boni in a long time. I'm hooked.

UPDATE: We don't plan to become that kind of site, but if you weren't already won over by Alessio try this. Lawdy, where'd I put those smelling salts...