title: la vita è bella (life is beautiful) year: 1997 director: roberto benigni (subtitles)
intro:
i've been a member of dvdsontap.com (now known as lovefilm.com) for a while now, and this has been waiting in my queue for ages. my boyfriend was a bit sceptical when i told him that it was a comedy about the holocaust (what i'd heard from a friend) but we decided to watch it anyway. i'd just like to point out that i usually wait a while before posting reviews of films that i have seen recently, but this one just made me want to tell as many people as possible about it, so i apologise if the review isn't up t my usual standard, having not had the time to digest the film properly.
plot:
guido, a jewish man, goes to the city to see his uncle, and discover the delights of city life. while there, he finds romance and excitement in the form of dora. later, tragedy strikes and guido and his son must find a way of escaping the horror that is a nazi death camp.
overview:
i was going to section this, but i'm not sure how without trivialising it. i hope you don't mind if i liberally abuse my usual structured style.
firstly i
have to say that i have not seen a film like this in years. i have not cried at a film since i was seventeen, i though i'd grown out of it and become tired and cynical in my old age (!) but apparently i haven't - this had me weeping buckets. but then i suppose that's because it's not meant to. there's not a spielberg-style manipulation here, i just found it almost painful to watch.
the film starts off innocently enough, with guido and his friend driving through italy in search of his uncle. the early scenes, and the ones in the city are good, but not particualarly spectacular. i found the subtitles intrusive, because i feel that if i had known italian the scenes would have been even more funny. I say 'even' because if you're a fast reader there is a lot of appreciation to be gotten from the early scens. If not, don't worry because there is more than enough here to make the point that this is a lighthearted man with a heart of gold who has fallen in love.
however, the coupling is not adored by everyone, and the earlier suggestions of anti-semitism come to the fore as guido and his son are shipped off to a concentration camp. the difference with this film though, is that, unlike 'Schindler's List' and other films attempting to show how bad the concentration camps were, this one actually succeeeds. The approach it takes is like no other film I've seen. Guido gets through the later part of the film by describing their occupation f the camp as a game. he has an explanation of everything which makes it seem like fun. This sounds like it's trivialising the whole situation, and I'm sure that in the hands of any other director it would be, but somehow benigni makes you feel in a way that films rarely achieve these days.
It's hard to describe without giving too much of the plot away, but somehow the coping strategy of guido and the constant upkeeping of spirits despite what is thrown at him, makes this film more unbearable than any 'realistic' account of what went on in these places. The fact that someone would care so much for this child to be so unselfish in his attitudes and actions is incredible, and such an original approach. The first part of the film, despite featuring some slapstick comedy that i found to be a bit silly in places (i suppose a bit chaplinesque) was completely necessary as far as character development goes, something which i was a bit wary about from the start.
The performances of the actors are hard to judge with a subtitled film i find, but did not find them bad in any way. loved the fact that benigni overplayed the cheerful father role, making everything sound exciting, so that at times even i found myself believing him that everything was going to be ok.
The scenery is gorgeous too. The part that struck me being the shot at the station as the train to the camp is pulling away. no pathetic fallacy for benigni: Life 'is' beautiful, even when perhaps it would be better for it not to be.
Conclusion:
What else can i say: the direction was superb, the script was entertaining at worst, genius at best, and at the end both my boyfriend and i were in tears (and he is really not one to cry at films). I would recommend anyone who has sat through histoy lessons thinking "yes the holocaust was bad, I'm bored now" to watch this film, and also anyone else. it moved me in a way i didn't think was possible with a film, and made me feel good about myself that i had been moved. what more could you ask for in a film? This is going straight in my top ten.
How helpful would this review be to a person making a buying decision? Rating guidelines
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