“Buongiorno principessa!” Two simple
words that bought a huge smile to my face during a film which has more
emotional peaks and troughs than a very emotionally peaky troughy thing. Life is Beautiful or La vita รจ bella in its original Italian
is a passionate and multi award winning comedy-drama set in Italy during
The Second World War. Its dark themes are counterbalanced with some delightful
comedy and a sweet story about a man trying to protect his young son from the
harsh realities of the war. Italian Jew Guido (Roberto Benigni – also director)
is a wildly imaginative and romantic soul who woos a local woman in amusing and
inventive ways. Fast forward a few years and Guido and his wife Dora (Nicoletta
Braschi) have a cute little boy called Joshua (Giorgio Cantarini). When Guido
and Joshua are taken to a work camp by the Germans, Guido puts in tireless
effort to hide the truth from his son, telling him that they are playing a game
for points in which the winning team will win a real life tank.
Life is Beautiful really is beautiful in of itself. It’s one of the
sweetest films I’ve seen and is amongst many people’s (including my Dad’s and
girlfriend’s) favourite films of all time. Not only is it a good-natured story
but it’s also very bold. Upon its initial release it faced some criticism for
making light of the Holocaust but personally I don’t think it does anything to mock
that horrific event or undermine the suffering of the millions who had to
endure abysmal treatment under the Nazis and their collaborators. Instead it
displays the triumph of human spirit and the deep love of a father for going to
great lengths to protect his son.
Great comedy has long courted
controversy and set about exploring taboo subjects. Almost a hundred years ago Charlie
Chaplin made Shoulder Arms, a film set in
the trenches of The First World War while the fighting was still raging. The
movie drew criticism from people who said that the subject wasn’t a fitting
stage for a comedy but it was immensely popular amongst soldiers. Over twenty
years later Chaplin made The Great
Dictator, parodying Hitler and Mussolini and helping to show America what
was really happening in Europe. Comedies like those and Life is Beautiful allow us to poke fun at the authority figures who
commit these awful acts as well as making heroes out of the little guys, the
people who would otherwise be part of the faceless masses. There is no subject
that it too taboo for comedy, it is only in how the content is delivered by
which the choice should be judged. Here, it’s delivered perfectly.
The film takes its time to build
up to the more sombre aspects of the plot but there are occasional, almost
light reminders of the attitude towards Jews in the late thirties. Guido
initially makes jokes about his uncle’s horse being graphitised and later hides
the truth behind a ‘No Jews, No Dogs’ sign on a local shop from his son,
stating that some people just don’t like some people. He suggests that another
local shop has a ‘No Chinese, No Kangaroo’ policy. Because the anti-Semitism is
slow to build but always in the background, the shift in tone when the film’s
setting moves to a work camp is one of gentle, albeit shocking surprise. In the
back of your mind, you always know what’s coming. Before we get that far though,
the film is a romantic treat, amongst the pleasant I’ve seen.
Without wanting to bang on about
Chaplin again, he was one of cinema’s masters of romantic comedy. Films such as
City Lights and The Kid were beautifully crafted to include romance and comedy in
equal measure and Life is Beautiful
follows a similar pattern. Guido first meets Dora, his princess, when she falls
from a hay loft into his arms. Later he continues to literally bump into her in
amusing situations and she is surprised by the way he just happens to show up.
In one scene he arrives at the school in which she teaches, impersonating an
inspector from Rome.
Later he saves her from a dull and rainy date in his car. The crowning sequence
though is one in which he uses local knowledge and recent events to stun her
with a series of seemingly improbable happenings such as a key falling from the
sky, a dry hat appearing on his head and an answer to a question, given by a
‘stranger’. It’s an adorable scene which is cheeky, clever and romantic. The
audience falls for it and so does Dora.
Guido puts his imaginative brain
to even better use once confined to the labour camp. In order to shield his
son’s eyes from the truth, he creates the imagined reality that they are taking
part in a game (the sort of which would probably find a home on Saturday night
television these days). Joshua has his doubts but trusts his father and through
clever manipulation of his surroundings, Guido keeps his son safe, fed and
alive. I won’t go into detail about much more of the plot in the camp but what
I will say is that it includes some of the most beautiful, poignant and
upsetting scenes that cinema can offer a person. It creates the sort of scenes
which will make you cry tears of sadness and tears of joy within seconds of
each other.
One of the film’s three Oscar
wins came by way of its score. Personally I think the score is one of the
weaker aspects of the film. It certainly adds to the comedy, tension, drama and
sadness when required but in a film which contains such emotive themes and
images, the overuse of the ‘happy’/’sad’ music felt unnecessary. It almost
tells the audience ‘this is when you cry’, ‘this is when you laugh’ and I don’t
think it needed to do that. The movie was nominated in the Best Picture, Director
and Screenplay category at the Oscars and I wouldn’t have begrudged it winning
any of those, particularly a Best Screenplay win. Another of its three
victories came in the Best Actor category.
Benigni found himself up against
some tough competition in that category but ultimately beat the likes of Tom
Hanks and Edward Norton, who would have got my vote for his performance in American History X. Benigni’s
performance though is fantastic and while not mesmerising, it’s certainly
memorable. He creates some great moments of drama and sadness, coupled with
huge belly laughs and his face says a lot at times when the dialogue falls
away. Giorgio Cantarini is also brilliant as the young Joshua, further proving
that Italy is a world leader at creating films with really cute little boy
characters (See Cinema Paradiso, Bicycle Thieves). The film was shot in
some stunning Tuscan and Umbrian towns and cities which had a genuine middle of
the century feel. The buildings looked to have stood for hundreds of years but
were dressed, as the characters were, in authentic World War Two era costume.
Before re-watching this film and
while watching it again I was thinking to myself that it was a solid 9/10 movie
but now I’ve come to actually write about it, there’s nothing I can think of
which warrants taking the final point away. I was never bored and always enthralled
either with laughter or sadness and sometimes both simultaneously. The film
looks great and the acting is highly accomplished while the story is simply one
of those once in a decade tales which ties everything together, leaving you
emotionally drained and both wanting more but leaving you thoroughly satisfied.
10/10
GFR 10/10
Titbits
- Benigni's Best Actor Oscar marked only the second time in history that a Director had directed himself to Oacar glory. The first was Laurence Olivier in Hamlet.
- Nicoletta Braschi is the real life wife of Roberto Benigni.
- The film's title comes from a Leon Trotsky quote. While in exile and with the knowledge that Stalin's assassins were approaching his saw his wife in the garden and wrote the words 'Life is Beautiful'.
Great review. I can't agree more. Life is Beautiful is one of few films I rate with 10. Really masterpiece.
ReplyDeleteGlad you agree. It's about as good as they come.
DeleteAdmit it Tom, you're a sucker for sentiment like the rest of us! :)
ReplyDeleteOf course, I love this movie too.
Oh yeah, totally. This film gets me every time.
Delete