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reviewed by Life is Beautiful This is a wonderful film starring Roberto Benigni and Nicoletta Brashi. The setting for the film is in the 1940’s in a small provincial town in Italy. The movie starts as a slap stick comedy with a romantic twist. In the beginning of the film Benigni plays a waiter, who finds himself falling in love and pursuing a woman he literally runs into over and over again. However there are complications in courting his “princess” as she's a teacher for a school and is to be engaged to a local Fascist leader for the town. The courtship lasts over the first hour of the film in which Benigni's witty charm begins to enthrall the young lady and he finally wins her love. However the film then takes a harsh twist as they seem to begin a second film in which the couple is married and has had a son. There life is happy together but is in mortal danger of being destroyed by the holocaust. There lives together are soon shattered as the Nazi’s arrive to take Benigni and his son to a concentration death camp. The day that was chosen to take them away was the child’s birthday so Benigni has to spin a story to enchant his son to help his son deal with the terrible trauma that was soon to be seen. Only after arriving at the concentration camp does the main actor Begnigni seem to comprehend the peril in which he and his son now face. He sees the story in which he has created to overt his son’s attention as the principle means to save his life. Benigni continues to lie to his son stating that the routines of the camp and the labor are all a game show to win a tank. As the death camp begins to reveal its true realism it is not until the lucky strong will of the child to take a shower with the other children, does Begnigni himself begin to understand the nature of punishment at hand. He became aware of the other children’s fate as they literally vanished after the children’s shower. Benigni realizes he must keep up his elaborate hoax with his son by telling his son they are hiding and that he should hide too. He even has the other men relating the same story to assist in protecting the child’s welfare. The game continues to the end of the film in which the United States Army was making key advances in Italy and the Nazi’s found themselves trying to cover there tracks by making a final attempt to destroy all the Jewish inmates. The father hides his son for the final time telling him if he is not found they get the final sixty points to win the first prize. The son should under no circumstance come out until all is quite and no one is around to win the game and it may be a long time before he can come and get him. Begnini then makes a desperate attempt to save his wife only getting captured in doing so. And on his final walk to his death knowing the hiding place of his son and that he must pass right buy him he continues the charade by creating a funny Nazi march and smiling as he walked. The day and evening soon pass and in roles the American Tank and the son is saved. They soon find his mother walking in a dismal line and returns him back to her. The son believes he has won the tank and the game. The reality of his father's death is never revealed to him until sometime after the film. Although this may have been a controversial film with the Jewish community. The film shows a brilliant irony and a desperate plea for the beauty of life. It is a drama and a comedy in its light hearted roles. However it deals with dreadful events that all have come to know. It shows a fathers love for his son and his desperate acts to save his son. His humor only shows to assist in sheltering his son from such a dreadful reality. After all, given the situation how would you try to make a child understand. How can there honestly be any way of telling the children. Many must have died never truly knowing why. In lays the irony of the film. reviewed by
Life Is Beautiful. Starring Roberto Benigni and Nicoletta Braschi Directed By Roberto Benigni Running Time: 1 hour 54 minutes. (Miramax) Only the Italians could create a love story set against the holocaust, and make it as wonderful and enjoyable as this. Benigni plays Guido, a Jewish bookstore owner who falls in love with Dora (Braschi.) However, this is during the period of Nazi Germany, and Guido, Dora, their son Giosue (Giorgio Cantarini) and Uncle (Giustino Durano) end up at a concentration camp. We follow their adventures there, as Benigni turns the camp into a 'game' to Giosue, an he tries to reunite himself with his wife. This film is truly great. Benigni gives a performance with a childlike spark that is so perfect and uplifting it puts a big smile on your face. From the jaunty comedy start to the heart breaking end, Benigni is full of warmth, charm and appeal. Having also written the screenplay himself, I imagine he performed the character just the way he wanted it, and it is perfect. Braschi isn't quite as strong as his wife, but she is still memorable, even if she does pale to the complete charm and energy of Benigni. Cantarini is an absolute delight, a wonderfully talented young actor who deserves to go on to much better things. He also gets an hugely up lifting scene at the end which has to be to be believed and cherished. The screenplay is great, if a little underwhelming at first. This is mainly because the first hour or so is a big set up for the main plot. Consisting of little romantic vignettes, it's still a comic delight, and the change of tone from whimsical romance to the horrors of the holocaust is so well handled by Benigni, it's seamless. In fact, you could almost forget it's set against the holocaust, if the film was not to remind you of all the horrors, such as the gas chamber. But the film has a bubbly charm that nearly offsets this. It may feel strange laughing through the holocaust, but Benigni sure makes it feel good. It's impossible to describe how enjoyable this film is. I could write paragraphs about how the energetic writing, directing, acting and even minor details such as the music and production design make this film a delight, but it wouldn't do the film justice. Benigni knows exactly what makes the audience tick, and exploits us completely. It's never too schmaltzy, it's never too depressing, it's just the right mix of whimsy and horror. The greatest achievement is that Benigni has created such as uplifting film about one of the scariest atrocities of the decade. Witty, surprising, fast paced and a triumph, Life is Beautiful is an instant classic. Do not miss out. RATING=***** OUT OF ***** A David Wilcock Review ©1999 reviewed by
LIFE IS BEAUTIFUL Reviewed by Luke Buckmaster Cast: Roberto Benigni, Nicoletta Braschi, Giustino Durano, Sergio Bini Bustric, Marisa Paredes, Horst Buchholz, Giorgio Cantarini Director: Roberto Benigni Screenplay: Roberto Benigni, Vincenzo Cerami Australian theatrical release: December 26 In Italian with English subtitles On the Buckmaster scale of 0 stars (bomb), to 5 stars (a masterpiece): 4 and a half stars For the first forty-five minutes or so of Life is Beautiful, the setting is Italy in the late 1930's. For Italian Jew Guido Orefice (Roberto Benigni), a lovable and quick-witted goof, life is fun. Life is full of pleasant surprises, romance and adventure. Life is beautiful. "X years later," things take a severe turn for the worse. Orefice's surroundings are no longer blissful, they are hostile. Signs on shop windows indicate that Jews and dogs are not allowed inside, and graffiti marks decorate the walls of Jewish shops. Life is not easy, but Orefice's spirits are far from buried. By the time Life is Beautiful reveals its dark core, Orefice is married to Dora (Nicoletta Braschi), a Gentile, and they have a cute five-year-old son named Giosue (Giorgio Cantarini). When World War II is nearly over, this charming family of three is imprisoned in a German concentration camp. Instead of revealing to his son the hopelessness of their situation, Orefice pretends that they are involved in a harmless game of hide and seek. Giosue must avoid the men "playing the really mean guys," or else him and his dad might not become "the winners" of the make believe competition. The remarkable thing about Life is Beautiful is that whilst it is a holocaust movie, it is also a comedy, and a hilarious one at that. Benigni's character is introduced during a long set of slapstick comedy scenes, all of which resemble the work of Charlie Chaplain or even Mr. Bean. These are colorful and light-hearted moments that are - in their most basic form - exceptional comedic work. As we giggle, though, the film's tone is changing, and we can feel it. Benigni (also the director and co-writer) does not give his audience an easy way out by defining when the moment of emotional impact will occur. While we laugh, our stomach begins to churn. That is why Life is Beautiful has become the victim of a widely conceived misguided criticism. Due to the film's comedic nature, it has been accused of ridiculing the Holocaust. Never since critics dubbed In the Company of Men as being just about men being cruel to woman has such a ludicrous allegation occurred. Strange as it may sound, but Life is Beautiful would have actually been less powerful had it not had its many moments of joy. If it had just focused on the concentration camp, we would not have had a period of time to compare it with. Films like Saving Private Ryan delve straight into the war itself, whereas Life is Beautiful makes sure we know what kind of life its characters are missing out on. Roberto Benigni's performance as the extravagant Orefice seems at first simplistic and one-dimensional. But as the story moves along, an interesting development occurs: Benigni simultaneously becomes the films comedic character and its tool to evoke emotion. Benigni shows unusual talent for displaying a man who hides his fear and hatred, for the sake of comforting his son. Just dubbing this accomplishment as one of the year's best performances probably doesn't give him justice; this is one of the most unique acts you'll ever see. If there is a definite fault in Life is Beautiful, it would lie in its script and the way Benigni handles it. On occasions, Benigni seems unsure of where he wants to go, so he ponders more than he pursues. That's fair enough when you imagine all the choices he would have had to make - when to develop the "serious" side of his tale, when to tickle the funny bone - but overall his direction is unmistakably brilliant. So too, is this film. Despite its depressing overture, Life is Beautiful is a beautiful experience. Roberto Benigni doesn't just mix drama and comedy; he often hides drama in the comedy. In that way, we cry while we laugh, whilst we celebrate a powerful and mesmerizing film achievement.
Review © copyright Luke Buckmaster reviewed by
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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