Oscar-winning Foreign Language Film LIFE IS BEAUTIFUL miraculously finds hope in the midst of unthinkable evil and death. Director, writer and star Roberto Benigni seems to channel Charlie Chaplin's slapstick and sentiment. The first half is made up of a sweet romance and the second half is an ironic tale of a father using make-believe to shelter his son from the horrors of the Holocaust. While making the concentration camp a game for his little boy, Benigni does not fail to understate the epic crimes that the Nazis committed.
Guido Orefice (Benigni, JOHNNY STECCHINO) moves to Rome where he falls for the pretty teacher Dora (Nicoletta Braschi, DOWN BY LAW)… or more accurately she falls from a barn to top of him to start. A series of Meet Cutes will follow leading to Guido sweeping his dream girl away from her fiancée. They get married and have a cute son named Giosue (Giorgio Cantarini, GLADIATOR); their lives seem perfect. But this is an illusion for they live in fascists Italy. On Giosue's birthday, Dora comes home to find her husband and son missing. After finding them on a train to the concentration camps, she joins them. Separated from his wife, Guido shelters his son from what is happening by telling the boy its all part of a game where the winner wins a real tank.
Benigni, writing the screenplay with Vincenzo Cerami, paces the material wonderfully. Guido's courtship of Dora is idyllic and sweet, but never maudlin. The fable creates a perfect family that is pure and simple, which gets broken up with the harsh realities of real evil. While he plays some slapstick during the concentration camp sequences, Benigni plays most of the humor off the irony of the game Guido plays with his son. Only the Nazis view the real Holocaust as a game, which is brought out brilliantly in Guido's interaction with Dr. Lessing (Horst Buchholz, THE GREAT WALTZ). Even capturing the scale of the atrocity, Benigni finds a powerful image to end on during a scene where Guido holds his sleeping son as they walk through the fog on the campgrounds.
The fact that Benigni had the guts to make this film is commendable. The fact that it's a powerful and poignant call for hope is a revelation. Cynics will disregard the film as sap, but they have only lost the capacity to hope themselves. Benigni believes in the need for optimism in the face of great despair. And he might make a few cynics believe too.
Rick DeMott
Animation World Network
Creator of Rick's Flicks Picks
