LIFE IS BEAUTIFUL
Reviewed by Harvey Karten, Ph.D. Miramax Films Director: Robert Benigni Writer: Vincenzo Cerami, Robert Benigni Cast: Roberto Benigni, Nicolette Braschi, Giustino Durano, Sergio Bustric, Marisa Parades, Horst Buchholz, Lydia Alfonis, Giuliana Lojodice, Giorgio Cantarini
What do women want? The answer is furnished in a New York Times magazine article that appeared on October 11, which cites a poll taken among a large group of young Italian women about the man with whom they would most want to take a cruise. Twenty percent chose Leonardo Di Caprio. Thirty percent picked Roberto Benigni. Now, Leonardo Di Caprio is cute as a button and, the word is, he's to make 25 million on his next picture. Robert Benigni is scrawny, balding, older, ungainly, and has nowhere near the wealth that the youthful American possesses. My conclusion? Money and looks are fine and will effect a following. But what a woman wants most is a man who can make her laugh.
Who better than Benigni? He is Italy's foremost comedian, sometimes called the Robin Williams of his country, but in movies like "Johnny Strecchino" and "Son of the Pink Panther" is more attuned to the agility of Charlie Chaplin. Looking at him in his latest creation, "Life is Beautiful"--in which he appears as the film's center and is its director and co-writer--you'd swear he was the reincarnation of Mr. Chaplin doing his own version of "The Great Dictator" but with a headier mixture of pathos and burlesque. Sometimes called two movies in one, in that the first half is pure burlesque while the latter segment mixes anguish with humor, "Life is Beautiful" is unified by the realization that the Benigni in the initial part is really no different from the man in the second: he is merely putting his imagination into overdrive to protect the family he loves so dearly.
The title comes from one of Trotsky's writings as he awaited impending death from one of Stalin's hit men: he said he still believed that life is beautiful. Benigni, in the role of the father of a five-year-old boy who together with the boy and the boy's mother is in a World War 2 concentration camp, wants to hide the reality of the situation from the youngster, to make his child believe throughout the ordeal that life remains beautiful amid the inhumanity of the quarters.
The first fifty minutes of the two-hour film is feather-light, filled with physical and verbal comedy in equal amounts. It includes one scene that is not only side-splitting but which effectively satirizes the insane racial theories that were guiding the Italian Fascists shortly after Mussolini signed a pact of alliance with Hitler. The initial scene sets the tone. In a case of mistaken identity Benigni (Guido) is traveling by car down a road when the brakes give out. Unable to stop he virtually plows into a crowd of people who await the arrival of their king and, as Guido tries to wave them away, his gestures are interpreted by the adoring multitude as a greeting, prompting them to return the display. Soon thereafter Dora (Nicolette Braschi--who appears in all of Benigni's films), an upper-class woman engaged to a pompous Fascist official, literally falls for Guido as though from the sky. Through a series of meetings that Guido has secretly planned, Dora pulls away from the arrogant official and marries Guido, but not before he carries out one of the picture's two hilarious scenes. In yet another case of mistaken identity, he is thought to be a Fascist dignitary inspecting an elementary school and is expected to give the assembled students some details on the new Aryan racial theory that's all the rage. Manipulating his gaunt body to the hilt, Guido pretends that he is himself the perfect Aryan specimen, possessing not only perfect ears but more important the ideal belly button--which he demonstrates to the open mouths of the assembled faculty, administrators and kids.
Some time later Guido, who now has a 5-year-old son, Giosue (Giorgio Cantarini), is arrested and sent by train to a concentration camp, while Dora, who is not Jewish, insists on being deported along with her family. Guido determines to protect his son from the horrors that now face them by pretending that the whole journey and incarceration is a game with the ultimate prize a tank for the person who can accumulate 1,000 points. The games include points for remaining silent, for hiding, for refusing to complain about the lack of food. When Giosue informs his father that the soldiers intend to make soap and buttons out of them and to cook them in an oven, Guido manages to laugh that off by showing how absurd it would be to think that "this button is Francesco" or "that piece of wood is a lawyer." (Ironically enough, that wildly unbelievable concept is perfectly true, a pathetic testimonial to the way the most cultured nation in Europe became engulfed in mass psychosis.)
Nicoletta Braschi in no way has the depth as a performer that the inordinately gifted Benigni enjoys and does not reflect the sense of anguish or passion that would make her decision voluntarily to go to the camp believable. One supporting role stands out, though; that of Horst Buchholz in the guise of a German physician, Dr. Lessing, who was once a guest in an Italian hotel and who struck up a friendship with Guido. When their situation has changed and Dr. Lessing finds himself a German officer inspecting the prisoners for signs of disease, he is severely conflicted almost to the point of a breakdown in discovering that Guido is a prisoner there. Little Giorgio Cantarini's performance is nothing short of miraculous. Cantarini is wise well beyond his years, adopting the rhythm of the role as though he were a puppet completely under the dominion of his dad. He winks at his father at appropriate moments, ducks and hides as though he were a noble hound reacting to the slightest wave of his master. But he is anything but an inanimate puppet, furnishing proof in scene after scene of his unalterable love for his protective papa.
"Life is Beautiful" does not show the true horrors of the death camp as other anti-Nazi films have done. The prisoners are worked to the bone, starved, dispirited and broken physically and spiritually. Yet they seem to go to their daily hard labors without a complaint and come "home" at night tired but not genuinely frightened. At no time does a German officer so much as hit a prisoner, nor are there frightening scenes of hangings. Though the little boy does not like the smell of the miserably overcrowded quarters, we see no evidence of toilet problems. In fact in one scene a German appears positively cartoonish as he barks orders to the inmates of the bunk in his own language, using Guido to interpret. Guido, further protecting his son from fright, "translates" the commands into purely comic directives.
What Benigni is after, then, is not yet another Holocaust picture like "Schindler's List" but rather a fable-like invention about the value of limitless family love in the face of institutionalized madness. Benigni is an original, carrying off a task that no other filmmaker has realized in quite the same way. "Life is Beautiful" indeed deserves the host of prizes it has garnered--the Grand Prix at the 1998 Cannes Film Festival and the David di Donatello Awards (the Italian Oscars) for Best Picture, Best Actor, Best Director and Best Screenplay. It's quite the style nowadays for filmmakers to combine comedy with melodrama, but how many helmers can successfully link physical comedy, parody, cultural observations and the surreal as Benigni has just done?
Rated PG-13. Running Time: 122 minutes.(C) 1998 Harvey Karten
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