Guido: Roberto Benigni
Dora: Nicoletta Braschi
Giosue: Giorgio Cantarini
Zio: Giustino Durano
Director: Roberto Benigni
Screenplay: Vincenzo Cerami, Roberto Benigni
Cinematographer: Tonino Dellicolli |
It's hard to imagine that anyone could make a comedy out of the story of savagery and heartbreak that was the holocaust. And yet, in "Life is Beautiful", Italian comedian and director Roberto Benigni (you may have seen him as Jacques in "Son of the Pink Panther", or the Roman taxi driver in Jim Jarmusch's "Night On Earth") has done just this. He has created a comic fable that celebrates the strength of the human spirit and the power of imagination even in the face of the most horrible atrocities.
Guido (Roberto Benigni) is a clown, a dreamer, someone who uses his imagination to make life more exciting and interesting. The early part of the film is pure comic invention, dominated by Benigni's wonderful verbal and physical comedy. There is a certain naivete and vulnerability in Guido that is very appealing, especially to the beautiful schoolteacher Dora (Nicoletta Braschi). Guido wins the woman of his dreams and they have a son.
But this is 1938, the year when Mussolini decided to cement a military alliance with Hitler and turned his back on his earlier pronouncements of racial tolerance. Signs begin to appear in shop windows announcing "No Jews or dogs allowed". Passing one of these signs, Giosue, Guido's young son, asks what it means. Guido dismisses it as showing the fears of the shop owners and immediately suggests that their bookshop will put up a sign "No spiders or Visigoths" - Giosue is scared of spiders and Guido says he's had enough of the Visigoths!
The film gets darker with the German occupation in September 1943. When Guido and his family are deported to a prison camp, Guido needs all his powers of imagination to protect his son from the horrors around him, and all his inventiveness to try and secure the survival of his family.
Even if you can't understand Italian (there are subtitles) the comedy and the messages of "Life is Beautiful" are there for all. It is a multi-layered film that sparkles with comic genius, whilst mercilessly revealing the contradictions inherent in racist attitudes. Benigni is brilliant, Dora beautiful and Giosue a delight. Whilst the horror of the extermination camps is ever present, it is ultimately overwhelmed by a sense of the wonderful resilience of the human spirit and the power of imagination.
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