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LIFE IS BEAUTIFUL
In many ways Roberto Benigni's "Life is Beautiful" is a courageous motion picture. After all, I don't believe anyone in the past has had the audacity to set a comedy against the backdrop of the very serious Holocaust, nor would anyone want to. By creating such a light-hearted tone for a film about one of the most cruel and heartbreaking periods in recent history, it would be easy to offend viewers, especially those whom have a personal connection with the Holocaust. Benigni, however, who directed the film and stars in the lead role, somehow succeeds at such a genre-bending convention (or unconvention, if you think about it), finding just the right balance between humor and drama so that the film in no way is condescending to the subject matter. The film begins as the Jewish-Italian Guido, a happy-go-lucky fellow (Benigni), arrives in a postcard-perfect Tuscan village where he stays at his uncle's home and obtains a job as a waiter at a nearby ritzy restaurant. Almost immediately, Guido runs into, or shall we say is hit by, the beautiful, kind schoolteacher Dora (Nicoletta Braschi) when she accidentally falls from a barn. After a pleasant and rather mystifying meeting, fate seems destined to bring the pair together when he runs into her a few more times (literally, when he crashes his bike, and figuratively, at the school where she works). The first hour of "Life is Beautiful" is a winning, sweet, and often funny romantic comedy, and Benigni constantly reminded me of the old comic greats Buster Keaton and Charlie Chaplin. Seven years pass and we discover that Guido and Dora are now married and have a young son (Giorgio Cantarini). All is well in their lives, and at the bookstore Guido owns, until anti-semitism slowly begins to make appearances in the village, first by having store signs put up saying, "No Jews or Dogs," and then by having their own home torn apart. Ultimately, Guido and his son are taken away to a concentration camp and are split apart from Dora, who is forced to go with the female prisoners. Through the horrors of the Holocaust which are only briefly shown in a shocking and haunting image of a mountain of dead bodies, Guido keeps his spirits up and tells his son that everything is only a game, and if they are the first people to reach one one-hundred points, they will win the grand prize: a real, life-size tank to ride home on. - Dustin Putman |
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