Bertolucci tells the story of the first half of the 20th-century through the lives of a pair of friends born on the same day, one a peasant (Gerard Depardieu) and one an aristocrat (Robert De Niro). As the friends grow up and grow apart, their experiences encompass the changing political and economic climate of Italy, and of Europe as a whole. Donald Sutherland and Burt Lancaster also star in this stunning combination of the intimate and the epic.