Hogan's Holocaust
Review of La Vita E Bello (1997, a/k/a Life Is Beautiful, in Italian with English subtitles)
Seen on 2 January 1999 by myself at the Paris for $8.75
There's a limit to which an audience that knows better can be asked to suspend their disbelief, and *La Vita E Bello* crosses that line when it uses the Holocaust more than it respects it.
The movie has two clear halves; the first part is in Arezzo, 1939, and the second is in a concentration/death camp run by the Germans. The first half is far better than the second, but is essential in establishing the motivation for Guido Orefice (Roberto Benigni). As a whole, it's disappointing--and insulting--despite many enjoyable and even hilarious moments.
Roberto Benigni is best known to American audiences from *Son of the Pink Panther* and as the Roman cabbie in *Night on Earth*, a manic physical actor with many traditional comic talents that lend themselves to farces. Here, Benigni is both co-author and director, and hand-tailored a role for himself in which he gets to flex all those comic muscles, everything from broad winks to careening down a hill in a car with no brakes. (In that latter scene, which opens the movie, he is mistaken for the King of Italy; a way of recognizing himself as the King of Italian Comedy, that country's most recognizable movie export these days).
So you wonder, how does all this fit into the context of a Nazi death camp? The answer: It doesn't.
The first half of the movie is a courtship, of Guido for Dora (Nicoletta Braschi, Benigni's wife), and of Benigni of the audience. Guido is a perpetual clown, somehow eluding capture from the Fascists he satirizes and creating minor miracles by manipulating coincidence. That he is Jewish in a time (1939) when Mussolini has passed laws against Jewish interaction with Italians is minimized. His uncle is roughed up periodically, and Guido accepts the old man's idea that sometimes "silence is the most powerful cry." (NOTE: *The Garden of Finzi-Continis* shows, realistically, the social and political isolation of Italian Jewry that led to their ultimate round-up after being successfully demoralized.) But the courtship works: Dora marries Guido and they produce a son.
It also works in that Benigni's comic charms win over the audience as he prances in lush white marble restaurants and among flag-waving patriots. He is part-Chaplin and part-Marx Brothers. Especially funny are the scenes in which he plays a shell game with a local fascist's hat--it's right out of Harpo and Chico. (The man's squabbling children are Benito and Adolfo). In fact, the first half of the movie comes close to the great farces of the 1930s.
However, when the family is sent to a death camp, *the antics continue*, which surely would have resulted in instant death. But Guido keeps up the pretense for the sake of his son Giosue (Giorgio Cantarini); he creates an elaborate game that teaches his son that hiding is essential so they can gain 1000 points and win a tank.
No matter how knowing and wise the son is, Guido explains away everything as "someone's lying to you" when he's asked if it's true that they will be turned into buttons and soap.
Playing the fool is often a matter of survival (who could forget *I, Claudius*), but set against the backdrop of genocide, this device is insulting to anyone who knows even the basics about the Holocaust. Here, the manipulation of coincidence is unbelievable. The likelihood that a man of no matter how much he might be driven by love of his son, wanting to ensure his survival, would have been rapidly demoralized and broken by the backbreaking physical labor, disease, killing, torture and atrocity at the camp. Ignored are *all* the features we know about the camps; the ever-watchful guards, their sadistic behavior; the omnipresent stench of death. It is not clear how long they are in the camp, but little Giosue is always neat and clean; surely in real life, he would be lice-ridden and emaciated. That Guido's clowning is barely affected by the sight of a pile of hundreds of corpses is just obscene.
The idea that Guido has made the "ultimate sacrifice" is soft and fuzzy, but in reality, he is teaching his son to hide behind a clown facade, and avoid what is plainly obvious. This goes counter to the countless examples of sacrifice and martyrdom in the real survival stories.
Perhaps *Life Is Beautiful* would have been better if Benigni had drawn upon the real stories of Italian Jews who eluded the Nazis with the help of their Christian neighbors; and Giosue could have learned some of the beauty of life from the example of righteous gentiles, who perhaps could have been brought into the games to allay the boy's fears.
As it remains, despite the "fable" introductory to the film, *Life Is Beautiful* cheapens the Holocaust experience, and insults your intelligence. If I could advise you to leave the moment the trains show up, you could then enjoy this film as "the lovable clown wins his princess." The first half is really must-see material; the second half is just plain odd.
More movie reviews by Seth Bookey, with graphics, can be found at http://www.geocities.com/Athens/2679/kino.html
The review above was posted to the
rec.arts.movies.reviews newsgroup (de.rec.film.kritiken for German reviews).
The Internet Movie Database accepts no responsibility for the contents of the
review and has no editorial control. Unless stated otherwise, the copyright
belongs to the author.
Please direct comments/criticisms of the review to relevant newsgroups.
Broken URLs inthe reviews are the responsibility of the author.
The formatting of the review is likely to differ from the original due
to ASCII to HTML conversion.
Related links: index of all rec.arts.movies.reviews reviews