Life is Beautiful Review
by Cheng-Jih Chen (postmaster AT cjc DOT org)March 25th, 1999
The afternoon before the Oscars, I finally got around to seeing "Life is Beautiful". I only caught a glimpse of Benigni's victorious stepping on of Spielberg as he clampered over the seats; I was tired and went to sleep early.
The movie has achieved a large share of acclaim, but there are also many detractors who argue that this slapstick comedy partially set in the Holocaust verges on Holocaust denial. Among of the examples I've seen include the New Yorker's film critic in two seperate articles, because the first one was too short to contain his arguments; an NPR piece that included commentary from Art Spiegelman, the author of Maus, who takes it personally as Benigni appears to be using the Holocaust as a metaphor, a corruption of Maus's use of using metaphor to approach the Holocaust [1]; and Salon's reviewer [2].
I went into the film with this critical baggage. This, of course, colors the film in a certain way: one starts to look to see if the movie confirms the criticisms. I'm not sure how important this is, as no film is seen in a vacuum of personal experience.
To summarize the basic plot (and get the obligatory bits of a review over with), we should note that the movie starts as a light romantic comedy. Benigni plays a waiter, pursuing a woman he literally runs into. There are complications: she's engaged to the local Fascist boss, who Benigni previous met in, well, let's say comic circumstances. Over the first hour of the film, Benigni's clown charms her, wins her over. Some years later, we find them their life together happily settled, with a precocious son scampering around. This idyll is shattered when the Nazis come and the family is taken to a death camp.
To keep his son alive, Benigni spins a story for him: the routines of the camp are an elaborate game, and the winner gets a big tank as first prize. Elaborations are improvised: when the rest of the children vanish, Benigni tells his son they are hiding, and that he should hide too. The charade continues until the end, when the war is over and the Americans roll in to liberate the camp.
I actually found this to be a fine film, but weightless. It makes a statement about love and humor conquering all, but it is not a tested proposition. Yes, Benigni is still able to act as a clown to keep his son alive and believing, but there was never any indication in the film that he could not act as a clown. There is little evidence in the film that his character changes with circumstance, that he is not compulsively the way he is. There is then no doubt that love and humor will conquer in this film: they simply exist and continue to exist, unchallenged by any real despair or doubt.
It's in this nonexistence of despair that I see the point of the film's detractors, and why they argue that it approaches Holocaust Denial Lite, which asserts that while the Holocaust happened, it really wasn't that bad. Yes, there are unrealistic touches with the physical presentation of the camp: it looks a whole lot like a summer camp, with fairly roomy barracks for the inmates. The guards have a touch of Hogan's Heroes about them (the actor who plays the SS guard spelling out the camp's rules, in fact, almost loses it and laughs out loud to Benigni's antics). Security is interestingly lax, as Benigni is able to get to the camp loudspeaker for quite a long time without interruption, as well as put a record player to good use in cheering up his distant wife [3]. But more importantly, there's a lack of despair or oppression, except for a few dramatically conducive moments. In some sense, the Holocaust isn't the Holocaust. In this movie, the Holocaust is merely a big bummer.
Interestingly, the one surreal moment of the film, when Benigni is taking is son home from the Officer's mess, the dreamlike fog parts and he sees a scene from a Breugel [4]: a mound of dessicated, naked corpses, what remains after Death has conquered all. Perhaps the decision to make this sequence otherworldly is acknowledgement that this ultimately light film cannot incorporate the reality of the death camps within its frame. It's in this sequence that the film comes closest to breaking through its comic straightjacket, to shake off its rictus of a smile. We see a hint that the clown may well be confronted by despair, but the hint doesn't last.
The film only works at one level, the simple one in which love, compassion and humor can overcome the most dire of circumstances. One critic noted that "Life is Beautiful" could have become a great ironic fable if the child was fully aware of what the camp was for, but was playing along with the father to maintain his father's sanity and faith that things will work out in the end. But Benigni doesn't take this path; it's unclear if you could have. Another route may have been to take seriously the notion that this film is a fable constructed from the wartime memories of a six-year-old boy: the death-camp-as-summer-camp is the world his father created for him, hiding the reality. Of course things were more pleasant; the loving father has spun a necessary illusion. But this is another road not taken, and the film's message remains uncomplicated.
[1] http://www.npr.org/ramfiles/me/19990317.me.11.ram
[2] http://www.salonmagazine.com/ent/movies/reviews/1998/10/30reviewa.html
[3] There's a similar scene in "The Shawshank Redemption". I think it's in the Stephen King short story, but I don't remember. I'm curious about the precedents for the record player stunt.
[4] http://www.fhi-berlin.mpg.de/wm/paint/auth/bruegel/death.jpg
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