# Vita è bella, La (1997)

### reviewed by
Bob Bloom

    Life is Beautiful (1998) 4 stars out of 4

Roberto Benigni is a clown in the tradition of Chaplin and Keaton.

This Italian film star, best known in the United States for the poorly received Son of the Pink Panther, has done the near impossible by creating a comic fable about the Holocaust.

But Benigni's Life Is Beautiful (La Vita E Bella) is not so much a story of the Holocaust as it uses that monstrous outrage against humanity as a backdrop to tell a story of familial love, devotion and sacrifice.

The movie starts out as a typical slapstick farce with Benigni's Guido arriving in the small Tuscan town of Arezzo in 1938 to fulfill his dream of owning a bookstore.

Like many of the slapstick clowns who preceded him, most notably the almost-forgotten Harry Langdon, Benigni's Guido has a childlike innocence. He ignores the growing anti-Semitism of the Fascist government.

Instead, Guido ardently falls in love and persues Dora, a local school teacher who already is engaged to a local Fascist official.

In Benigni's tightly wound script this is the same Fascist official with whom Guido had an earlier unfortunate - yet slapstick - encounter.

     Guido wins Dora. They marry.

Fast forward about five years. Guido, Dora, and their 5-year-old son, Giosue´ (Giorgio Cantarini) are a happy family. Guido has finally fulfilled his dream of opening a bookstore.

But racial and anti-Semitic tensions are on the rise in Italy, and Guido has determined to do his best to shield his son from these harsh realities.

The task becomes even the more difficult when the family is deported to a concentration camp. Here, Guido must use all his skill and imagination not only to shield his son, but to keep him from being exterminated.

It is at this juncture in Life Is Beautiful may tend to offend those whom the Holocaust has touched. For the scenes in the concentration camp lack the horror, the pain, the unimaginable suffering of a Schindler's List.

True, many Italian Jews were not deported until the war was nearly over, and most were not sent to the death camps, but to work camps where they were used as slave labor.

Unlike Steven Spielberg, Benigni is not out to tell the story of the Holocaust. His story is about family and the lengths a parent will go to protect a child.

For Guido, to save his son, transforms the entire experience into an elaborate game. Giosue´ must follow the rules without question to amass 1,000 points. The winner takes home a tank.

Therefore, Guido tells him, he must remain hidden in the barracks. He cannot make a sound nor allow the guards to see him.

Guido explains this during a hilarious sequence when a German guard barks the camp instructions to the newly arrived inmates. Guido, lying that he understands German and can translate for his fellow prisoners, instead lays down the rules for his son to allow him a chance to survive.

Throughout their imprisonment, Guido's quick thinking continually keeps his son from harm's way.

Ultimately, the allies rescue the camp. In a poignant scene, Giosue´ comes out of hiding just as an American tank rolls into the compound. The boy goes wide-eyed with wonderment and delight, thinking he has won the game.

The price for his victory is most high.

Benigni has succeeded in using the blackest moment in human history to prove that even in hell, a ray of hope and salvation can penetrate the darkness.

Life Is Beautiful is a fantasy, a fable. It is not to be taken as a record of the Holocaust. Those who object to it are missing its point.

And that is simply where there is hope, where there is life and where there is love, the spark of humanity will never be extinguished.

Bloom is the film critic at the Journal and Courier in Lafayette, Ind. He can be reached by e-mail at bloom@journal-courier.com or at cbloom@iquest.net

    cb

Carol Bloom of Bloom Ink Publishing Professionals 3312 Indian Rock Lane West Lafayette, IN 47906-1203 765-497-9320 fax 765-497-3112 cbloom@iquest.net

Committed to Lifelong Learning through Effective Communication

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