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Life Is Beautiful

1997, Movie, PG-13, 114 mins

Life Is Beautiful: Review

LIFE IS BEAUTIFUL | LA VITA E BELLA
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Italian comedian Roberto Benigni's World War II-era farce (released in the US both in Italian with subtitles and dubbed into English) is a tough proposition: Half the action is set in a concentration camp, and its tragicomic inventions are sometimes forced. The first half is standard Benigni burlesque, complete with witty visual gags and rapid-fire repartee: Puerile but good-hearted Guido Orefice (Benigni), an Italian Jew, relocates to Arezzo in 1939 and gets a job through his uncle Eliseo (Giustino Durano), a head waiter at a fancy hotel, while dreaming of opening a bookshop. While applying for a permit, he has a disastrous encounter with officious local Fascist Rodolfo (Amerigo Fontani), who's in love with the beautiful Dora (Nicoletta Braschi). But Guido keeps bumping into Dora — literally — and enchants her with his romantic inventions. Anti-Semitism rears its ugly head when Eliseo's horse is daubed with racial slurs, and Guido later uses the steed to hijack Dora from the lavish engagement party celebrating her engagement to Rodolfo. Several years later, Guido and Dora have a small son, Giosue, and though their lives are circumscribed by anti-Jewish laws, Guido manages to laugh matters off until the town's Jews are all rounded up and put on a train bound for a concentration camp. Guido creates an elaborate game of make-believe designed to shield Giosue from the camp's horrors, promising the boy the grand prize of a German tank. It would be folly to expect brutal realism in this situation, but Benigni's imperviousness toward real human suffering is a questionable tactic: When Giosue asks if it's true that the Germans make soap and buttons out of the prisoners and Guido starts riffing on the idea's preposterousness, plucking off shirt buttons he dubs Antonio and Paolo, the laughs are nervous at best. Benigni wants to tell a poignant fable rooted in the love between a father and son, but everything hinges on whether one finds his gags inspired or tasteless. Humor can only save some of us. leave a comment --Sandra Contreras
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