Life is Beautiful

Have applied for a distance Film Journalism course at the BFI. Submitted the following review as part of my application. This was written when 'Life is Beautiful' was released in India - 1999 or 2000 from what I remember. Afraid it might be immature but didn't have time to do a fresh review, just added the synopsis as it's a requirement. Hoping for the best, though it will be a struggle paying for the course even if I do get through.

Life is Beautiful

Synopsis

Arezzio, Italy, 1939. Guido, a Jew, arrives with his companion Ferruccio looking for work. He runs into a beautiful non-Jewish school teacher, Dora, with whom he falls in love. Guido’s uncle sets him up as a waiter in a high-end restaurant where Guido meets Doctor Lessing, a German official obsessed with riddles. Guido wants to open a bookshop and goes for relevant permissions to Rudolfo, a Fascist official, with whom he has an unpleasant, comic experience. Guido courts Dora, impersonating a school inspector to visit her. Guido learns that Dora is engaged to Rudolfo, but they steal away from her engagement reception, get married, and have a son, Giosue. They open a bookshop and lead a fairytale existence. However, anti-Semitism is growing and Guido is forced to make up funny tales to explain away anti-Semitic slogans to his son.

On Giosue’s fifth birthday, he and Guido are arrested and put on a train to a concentration camp. Dora insists on being deported as well. To shield his son from the horrors of the concentration camp, Guido pretends that it is the elaborate setting for a game in which points are to be gained to win a real tank. Guido meets Doctor Lessing again, and thinks that he is willing to help them escape. However, Lessing is just interested in discussing riddles. When the Germans abandon the camp, Guido manages to escape and hide Giosue. He looks for Dora, but is found and shot. Giosue is rescued by an American soldier in a tank who unites him with Dora.

Review

If ever a master of slapstick was born to follow Chaplin he is Roberto Benigni. The comfortable ease and precision of timing which mark his performance in Life is Beautiful leave one awe-struck. Though the film is starkly divided into two movements, the idyllic joy at Arezzio, and the grim certainties at the concentration camp, Benigni does not miss a beat. This unchanging positivity is essential for a film on the ability of imagination to overcome all odds.

Benigni’s triumph lies in that though his audience is faced with the grim reality of the holocaust, and that the peril of the characters being exterminated increases with every minute of film time, tears are virtually non-existent. It is only at the end with the voice-over of the child thanking his father, that Guido’s strength of spirit, awakened to protect his son, his cheerfulness and refusal to give in to the luxury of sobbing over his fate, cause eyes to well up in silent admiration.

Nicola Piovani’s Oscar-winning dramatic score at times comes out of its role as mere background music meant to highlight the visuals, and becomes the primary sensation, with the visuals as accompaniment. There is nothing amiss in the setting up of an Italy of 1939, from excellent locations to show both Arezzio and the concentration camp, to the costumes and manner of the characters.

It is easy to overlook the other brilliant actors in the film since Benigni steals the show. Sergio Bustric as Ferruccio, Guido’s friend, poet, and upholsterer, plays his supporting role in the first part of the film well. Nicoletta Braschi, Benigni’s real life wife and co-star in almost all his films, is charming as his ‘Principessa’. Giustino Durano as Guido’s reserved, but witty uncle, shone in the first scene he appears in, hurriedly welcoming Guido as he makes his way to work on his white steed ‘Robin Hood’. The bond between Benigni and Giorgio Cantarini who plays his son is always present.

This film took the festival circuit by storm, winning innumerable awards all over Europe, besides winning three Oscars for Best Actor (Roberto Benigni, beating both Tom Hanks and Nick Nolte), Best Original Dramatic Score (Nicola Piovani, beating Hans Zimmer) and Best Foreign Film. It was also nominated in the categories of Best Picture and Best Director (both honours rarely given to a foreign film), Best Screenplay (Vincenzo Cerami and Benigni) and Best Film Editing.

But, as with other holocaust comedies before it, Life… opened to a lot of criticism in 1997. Time magazine wrote: “…turning even a small corner of this century’s central horror into feel-good popular entertainment is abhorrent.” The usual Freudian analysis has dubbed it as a depiction of ‘symbolic castration’. Besides the known obvious that comedy brings out tragedy in greater proportion, the fact is that in times when newspapers report that seventy percent of schoolchildren suffer from anxiety attacks and nightmares because of environmental deterioration, films like Life…serve an important purpose.

As the prophet says:

Have no fear for atomic energy, ‘cause none of them can stop the times…

- Bob Marley, Redemption Song
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S's sister N has been down here from New York. Who would have thought he would have such a nice sister? Have been having a great time hanging out with her. Wish she lived here permanently. She is an architect, has been to Rhode Island School of Design, and currently is designing the new subway system in NYC - how cool is that? Plus she coffees with Mila Jovovich!

She hates it in NYC and would love to move here. Wants to have a steady relationship and settle down with babies. All her friends in NY are gay or deranged.

She is very easy-going and laidback, yet has experimented with everything there is to experiment with.

Tomorrow's her last day here. Hope she finds some great straight guy in the last 24 hours and decides to move here!