Kingdom of Italy, 1939.
Guido, the hero of our tale, is a cute man with a childlike innocence -funny, energetic, sharp. He has arrived to Arezzo for work. There he meets the love of this life, the beautiful annd gentle Dora. But there is one small problem (well, more than one, but first things first): Dora is engaged to the local fascist official, Rodolfo.
Should Guido stop from trying to conquer his "principessa"? The common logic would say that he should, since it is 1939 and the fascist have the power but also, Guido is Jewish, and the prejudice against Jews is growing rapidly.
But Guido doesn't give up and sets up many, many incidents -"coincidental", of course- so that he shows Dora his love for her. Finally, Dora feels the same way about Guido, and agrees to give her heart to Guido (during her engaement party to Rodolfo). They run away on a horse and live happily ever after...
That would be a perfect ending for any movie. But in this film, things don't go as we would like to. After all, it's World War II years. In 1944, our heroes, Guido and Dora, married and with a son, Giosue run a bookstore. Their life is difficult, because the prejudice against the Jews in that era have become Racial Laws, but Guido is determined to protect his son from the brutal realities of their lives, even when Guido, Giosue and his other relatives are sent to concentration camps.
Dora gets on the train and volunteers to follow her family in the concetration camp, though as men and women are seperated she doesn't get to see of be close to her family.
Guido on the other hand does everything in his power and sometimes exceeding his powers to keep his little boy happy and unaware of the terrible things that happen in the camps. He tells his son that the concetration camp is a game and whoever wins one thousand points will win a tank and "invents tasks" for Giosue in order to comply with the life in the camp and trying to stay alive.
I won't reveal any more part of the plot. It's up to you to watch the film and find out the end.
But I will give you four reasons to watch it (and perhaps, one reason not to watch it)
- First of all, Roberto Benigni. The man is a genius and a total maestro of facial expressions, situational comedy and rapid scene changes. With his giddy humour, his mannerisms, effortlessly evoke laughter. Some have said that Benigni might well be the world's greatest clown.
But a "clown" with political and social thinking who dares to satirize the ills of the times. I was not because of the Racial Laws that people became hostile to the Jews. There was prejudice before, there was support from the italian people for the Fascist Party. It wasn't just the foreign powers that did this, sometimes it was the "next door neighbor" who turned the Jews in.
2 Also, the actress that plays Dora (Nicoletta Braschi, Benigni's wife in real life) and the child actor that plays their son, (Giorgio Cantarini) are exquisite. You could watch just for the little one and his facial expressions.
3 The music of Piovani, even in the darkest hours...
4 But what's amazing is the subject that he chose for his film, his characters and the setting. Benigni is making a film about the Holocaust that doesn't present the repulsive truth of what happened there, the inhuman situation that the victims of the Holocaust experienced. We see it all through the eyes of two children, a young one, Gioseu, and an older one, Guido, with a comic-tragic dimension.
Make no mistake, the subject of the film is what is stated in the title: Life is beautiful. Guido and his principessa lived a fairy tale, in which at some point an evil dragon appeared to do them harm. The hero's victory is essentially that he doesn't let the evil dragon destroy what he holds most precious: his son.
It's a love story at its core, a hymn to life. The heroes live in a supernatural world of princesses and dragons. They have to struggle to survive. Perhaps it is the only reason worth living,life is good when you can change the "sign" in its difficult situations and shape the world as you want or as it suits you!
But even though I enjoyed this film, I have an objection to state. The history of those years is very dark and perhaps this "tragicomic" view does not allow us to understand the magnitude of the tragedy, the loss of human nature in the concentration camps, the victims of the Holocaust. Just as the appearance of Americans as liberators in the camp is a major historical inaccuracy.
But, it is beautiful when you can see a ray of light in the thick darkness, a delicate flower in a burnt forest or an innocent child's smile - like the one described by the director and father in the film - emerging in wartime in a concentration camp.
A couple of political prisoners try to show the greatness of life, joy and love to their young son and to themselves, in the darkest times of humanity, such as the interwar period.
It is in these moments in the film that the mixed emotions of joy and sorrow become one. These are the moments when love survives by giving the fruit of life...
The ones that brings us the smile in our face...
La vita e bella
Director: Roberto Benigni
Writer: Roberto Benigni, Vincenzo Cerami
Stars: Roberto Benigni, Nicoletta Braschi, Giorgio Cantarini, Giustino Durano, Sergio Bustric, Horst Buchholz
Length: 116 minutes
Year: 1997
Language: Italian, German, English
Country: Italy
Thanks for reading!!!
