Life is Beautiful Review
by Matt Prigge (chandlerb AT geocities DOT com)January 4th, 1999
LIFE IS BEAUTIFUL (1997)
A Film Review by Ted Prigge
Copyright 1998 Ted Prigge
Director: Roberto Benigni
Writers: Vincenzo Cerami and Roberto Benigni
Starring: Roberto Benigni, Nicoletta Braschi, Giorgio Cantarini, Giustino Durano, Sergio Bini Bustric, Marisa Peredes, Horst Bucholz, Lidia Alfonsi
The entire world has been praising Roberto Benigni's "Life is Beautiful," and I'm no exception to that. I too think it's a wonderful flick, but I suspect for different reasons. Everyone's been praising this as a great uplifter, a - oh, how did they put it? - "triumph of the human spirit." In fact, the opposite is true, and it took me awhile to come to my conclusion that the entire film is about man's ability for denial, and the way horrific instances cause certain people to pervert reality in favor of themselves, and thus harm others considerably, if not mortally, psychologically. I can remember seeing it vividly: I laughed through the first, magical half, then hardly peeped during the second, except to let out a couple hollow laughs at some rather funny moments.
But as I went home, I felt unsatisfied in my delight for the film, while my movie-going companion seemed to think it was the greatest film of the year, without a shred of doubt. Cute, witty, and sad. Sure, it was. I let that unsatisfaction subside, though, and I began to write the review that everyone else had written - how it was wonderfully uplifting, as good as the best of Chaplin, all that crap. But the more I thought of it, I decided that my primary reasoning had, in fact, been compeltely off.
Let me lay out the film for you, first, to illustrate my point. The film, as you may have heard, is about the Holocaust, but it's also a comedy (don't mesh those words together, though: this is not a "holocaust comedy," as I describe it to some of my friends who haven't seen it, jokingly). Great Italian comic actor Roberto Benigni directs, co-writes, and stars in the film as a hapless character who is a joyous motormouth, a wonderfully adept physical comedian, and also energetic and charismatic. He's not exactly the Little Tramp or Buster Keaton or anyone else from the silent era though: he's an original creation, though a bit inspired by them.
But anyway, his character, Guido, moves to a lovely, picturesque Italian city in the beginning of the film, and along the way, meets and falls in love with a beautiful woman, Dora (Nicoletta Braschi, his wife and thus his co-star). She is, of course, engaged to another man, and of course, he's a jerk and he hates Guido because of a hilarious situation that happens early in the film. Much of the first fifty minutes deals with his attempts to woo her, by bending reality so that he can be with her, and his attempts at becoming a respectable waiter so that he can make money and one day open a bookstore of his own.
It's all rather predictable, and we've seen it all before, but that hardly means it's arbitrary to the rest of the film; the first half is hilarious and witty and charming and it's completely entertaining in the way films today aren't. Gags abound, and the romance between Guido and Dora becomes sweet like romances aren't these days. However, this first half isn't just cuteness: it's deceptively complex, with hints that this film may be deeper than just uplifting, and that Benigni probably just didn't stumble onto something more interesting. As Benigni courts Dora, he finds he is able to bend reality, and soon keys are popping into his hand at will, and she's becoming truly in love with him because he is so magical and wonderful and so not the bore her temper-ridden fiance is. By the time, he rides into her engagement reception on a horse and sweeps her off her feet, the film has almost transcended any traces of realism, and become a truly magical experience...and take note of that, because they carry on a picturesque, near-perfect life together. They have a child named Giousé (Giorgio Cantarini), he opens the bookstore, and they stay completely in love with eachother. They also live in Italy during the holocaust and Guido just happens to be Jewish, so when he and Giousé are taken away by Nazis to go to concentration camp, their life is shattered.
Now here's where the film becomes complicated, not to mention controversial: in order to protect his son from the horrors, Guido lies to Giousé and tells him that it's all a game, an adventure holiday disguised as a horrific prison. Points are handed out for doing things like not asking for desert, and hiding from the Nazis, and not screaming. In fact, in one scene when a German officer comes into the shack where the prisoners are held and asks for an interpretor, a non-German-speaking Guido says he can translate and turns every word and every gesture the officer makes into a description of the rules of the game. The complicated thing about this is is he really protecting Giousé? By the end (if you don't want to hear what happens, skip a paragraph or three), when Guido has been gunned down by an officer for making trouble, and Giousé thinks he has won the game by collecting a thousand points, and is then reunited with his mother in one beautifully uplifting reunion where they're both happy to see eachother and have no clue their father and husband is lying in a ditch a couple miles away, you have to wonder if this isn't the least uplifting film of the year disguised as the exact opposite. Though the narration by an older Giousé says he's happy his father retained his son's humanity, it's a wonder if everyone in this film isn't in deep denial, and if they are, this has to be the entire point of the film. Guido, a man who has been able to pervert the truth for the entire film, finds himself in real hellish conditions, and tries to fix them by lying to himself and to his son, finally meets a tragic conclusion - not so uplifting anymore, eh?
But that's what's so extremely interesting about this film. It's deceptive and clever, and it certainly had me thinking it was something else and not such a downbeat film. In fact, this may be the greatest hoax in contemporary cinema: the film has been praised as the great humane film of the year, been awarded numerous accolades from organizations who usually don't recognize films, and Benigni himself has gone around discussing how it is a great message for his life, and how his father used to water down the stories of his life in a concentration camp to not freak his kids out. Maybe a little bit older, Benigni has recognized the errors of his father's ways: by not telling the truth, he has perhaps awakened some deep psyhological demons in his son when he learned the bitter truth about life, and Benigni, clever bastard that he is, has constructed a film so complex that it can only be accurately discerned by heavy thinking and a lack of suppression. The fact that I denied the final shot, the key to the entire film's truth, and thought it was a great uplifter was one example of Benigni's genius as a filmmaker.
In fact, out of all the reviews I've read for this film, only one other critic in the entire world agrees with me, and that's Mike D'Angelo, who makes the exact same case as I do, and likes it about as much as I do. He too spotted the hints, the allusions to Schopenhauer, and the little tricks Benigni uses to make his point about denial so incredibly truthful, that if the only thing I have wrong with this film is that it is deceptive. I'm always a tad taken back at a film that uses manipulation to make its own ends meet, and I'm a little appalled that Benigni has let it go as far as he has (unless, of course, I'm reading this film completely wrong, and that's not out of the question).
Add that along with the fact that the second half is just not as great as it should be, even with the deception, and you have a film which is, yes, great, but perhaps not as great as it could be. I admire the fact that it goes to such far lengths to get its point across. But that doesn't mean that it's perfect. But as it is, "Life is Beautiful" may be the most engagingly ironic film to ever hit the big screen - a film that I fear may result in bad word of mouth if every critic realized the truth behind the mask long after they've praised it for being so incredibly "uplifting."
MY RATING (out of 4): ***1/2
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