Life Is Beautiful

Rating:
Summary: Both hilarious and deeply moving
Review: When Roberto Benigni burst onto the Hollywood scene with this acclaimed film and his over-the-top enthusiasm, I couldn't bring myself to watch this film. Instead, I waited for the DVD. However, what I perceived as hype was truly deserved. "Life is Beautiful" is a wonderfully inventive tale that seems fresh even today, years after its first release. Part slapstick, part drama, part romantic comedy, part tragedy - this story of an Italian family during the Holocaust defies categorization.

The films opens with Guido (Benigni) and his friend arriving in town on a car with no brakes and being mistaken for facist officials expected for a parade. This slapstick scene ends with Guido catching the future love of his life, Dora (Nicoletta Braschi), as she jumps from a barn window. The clownish Guido sets out to win her heart despite the odds against him. These early scenes set the stage for the rest of the movie: Guido will rely on invention, humor, and persistence to protect his loved ones despite the obstacles he faces. What begins as slapstick becomes heartbreaking later. Like all stories of the Holocaust, this film has its grim side, but Benigni relies heavily on exaggerated humor, running gags, and an early circus-like atmosphere to set up the emotional power of the time's reality. Most of the atrocities are implied, not witnessed, and the viewer's own knowledge of the time period creates an additional layer of tension.

Roberto Benigni is superb as Guido; his antics are hilarious, but during more dire moments, emotions flash across his face, revealing both the depth of his character and the reality of his position. Nicoletta Braschi is also good, and little Giorgio Cantinini as Guido?s son Joshua is adorably spunky, especially as he questions his father's stories.

I always advocate watching foreign films in the original language, with subtitles, but I understand that some viewers may not like "reading" a movie. In this case, however, the dubbed version was distracting, as Benigni provides the English track for his own character while American voices dub the rest of the cast. His Italian accent amid the American accents completely broke the illusion for me. Still, if a dubbed version is the only way you'll watch this movie, please do it.

I highly recommend "Life is Beautiful." Its offbeat approach remains unparalleled in the canon of Holocaust movies. Because of the absence of explicit violence and sex, viewers as young as thirteen should admire this extraordinary film.

Rating:
Summary: Life is Beautiful--DVD
Review: What a wonderful movie this is. The DVD is great, as you can either watch it in subtitles, or in English, it's great. It's about a man who is put into a Nazi camp back in WWII with his son, and makes a game out of their experience so that his son Joshua won't get scared {in fear if he cries, he'll get executed}, so he tells his son that if he obeys while they are on this 'vacation' he'll win a Army Tank of his own. The whole movie is great, the acting couldn't of be done with anyone else. Beautifully portrayed with no cursing, or sex scenes, how rare to find such a great movie. I recommend this movie for everyone. A little bit of history along with entertainment....great find!

Rating:
Summary: 5 star comedy - not so sharp on the Holocaust
Review: There are very few films you can watch in a foreign language with subtitles which will make you laugh out loud. Life is Beautiful will do so from beginning to end. Benigni is a motor-mouthed genius, the script and screen play devilishly inventive and impishly funny all the way along.

It's certainly no flat-out rib-tickler: The experiences of a Jewish Italian waiter and his family in a concentration camp could hardly be wall to wall slapstick. (Well, in Mel Brooks' capable hands, maybe - but Benigni has bigger fish to fry than Mel Brooks ever did.)

HOWEVER, I was not so taken with the Holocaust element. For one thing, the film is deliberately surreal and derives much of its humour from patently improbable situations: Benigni's character, a lovable wag, spends the entire film getting away with things which would throw any mortal into hospital, jail or a santitorium. So there's inevitably an element of Hogan's Heroes about the Concentration Camp scenes. This is fine on the comedy level, of course, but it does undermine any more serious a points Benigni might be trying to make. And Life is Beautiful unquestionably does stoop to collect some cheap gravitas.

[Warning: Controversial View coming up:]

As an exercise in harrowing film-making, depicting the Holocaust is easy pickings. You don't need to be Spielberg or Polanksi to create an emotional wrecking-ball out of Dachau: the Nazis did that by themselves. You only have to have seen "The World At War" to realise that pure reportage of the Holocaust is horrifying enough without any dramatic push.

And, like it or not, Benigni does collect on this front. I don't think that detracts from the excellence of this film - which is, after all about what a father will do for his family - but I think it considerably skews the Deep & Meaningful Index readout.

Which is to say is that Life is Beautiful is a standout piece of cinema because of its wit, not because of its treatment of the Holocaust. What's more, it's the better for that. Comedy is a much harder trick to pull off than high drama.

Rating:
Summary: Protection of Innocence Amid the Horror
Review: Life Is Beautiful is an extraordinarily significant work of art. Screenwriter/Director/Actor Roberto Benigni takes Tragicomedy to new heights, even as he pays tribute to the finest work of Charles Chaplin. Benigni plays Guido, an Italian Jew whose ethnicity is suddenly and shockingly targeted by the Nazis at a time when he is growing a young family- after having, literally, fallen upon the "Princesa," the woman of his dreams- as well as a fine bookstore. A genuinely happy, warm and charming person, Guido, along with millions of other Jewish people, is now beset by woes of almost horrificaly unimaginable proportions as he and his little boy are taken away by the Nazis to a concentration camp. His intent, no matter what may follow and above all else except keeping his child physically alive in Auschwitz, a place and time where Jewish children were systematically gassed and killed, is to protect the innocence of his young son by pretending the whole horror is a game, the end of which, if he plays right, is to win a tank. Guido's wife, who is not Jewish and not sent on the train, insists on accompanying the rest of her family, husband and son, to Auschwitz, much to the surprise of the Nazi soldier at the train station; her life is her loved ones, something he does not understand.

The strikingly beautiful cinematography- including exceptionally rich use of color, choice of camera shots and movement, set- and costume design-, editing, stirring musical score and fine surrealistic touch reminiscent of Fellini, make this film enjoyable and poetic in a visual sense, because there is rhyme and reason to each decision made by Benigni as screenwriter and director, as they blend with the dialogue, acting, story and theme to create a finely crafted, richly inspired, tragicomic masterpiece that brings forth tears of abject sadness amid the light of Guido's sense of play and fatherly protection- "You always did want to go on a trip," he softly tells his little boy as they are carted off in the death train amid the foreboding musical passage that accompanies this shot. This seems bizarre but it is only the beginning of this man's overwhelming desire to shield his beloved child from the pain of the reality that confonts their family. In fact this preparation was actually, in a sense, begun before that, when Josue playfully hid from his mother in a little cabinet to avoid taking his bath, with his father in collusion with the game, something that winds up saving him from the fake "bath" at the camp. The use of extreme close-ups is reserved by director-screenwriter Benigni for the most poignant point in the film, where a final wink from Guido to little Josue hiding in the cabinet places the seal on the reality of their game of survival and preservation of the child's innocence. Survival in the physical sense and also in the emotional or psychological sense is Guido's role as father/protector of his child. Other high cinematic/editing feats include those such as the skillful, unobstrusive change of time from the courting of his wife stage to the realization of their family they created, five years later,in one single shot. This makes clear the family/child they created is a direct result of the love they have for each other. Cinematic poetry is unfortunately a rare phenomenon on the big screen, so this one is a true gem. It should be watched in the original Italian, because the true voices of the characters that people this film belong to them and should be heard by all.

Rating:
Summary: This is a touching story
Review: Contrary to what all the hullabaloo was about concerning the degradation of the Holocaust that many people accused Roberto Begnini of, this movie is simply a touching story about a man and his son trying to survive the Holocaust. Roberto's character, Guido, is taken along with his son Giusue to Auschwitz on what happens to be Giusue's 5th birthday. Because the boy is so young, Guido makes every effort to try to hide the real horrors of their experience from Giusue by telling him it's all a game and everyone gets points for doing things. He then goes on to tell the boy that the first person to get 1,000 points wins the game and gets a real tank as first prize. This helps Giusue cope to a point, because Guido has to keep the story about the game going. The movie is a real tear-jerker, but it has lighter scenes to help it seem not so completely depressing. The concentration camp scenes were actually filmed at Auschwitz. I recommend this film to anyone who wants to see Roberto Begnini at his pinnacle.

Rating:
Summary: Life is beautiful
Review: Life bautiful is a marvelous story

Rating:
Summary: Outstanding!
Review: Probably the best film I've seen in my life. It has everything... a very original plot, humour, pathos, love & harsh reality. The period has also been captured beautifully. A once-in-a-lifetime creation. Mr.Benigni will find it very difficult to make a film like this again.

Rating:
Summary: The most meaningful movie I have ever seen!
Review: I am reminded of the words of Leo Tolstoy: "The secret to being happy is to be..." "Life is Beautiful" is about living a passionately happy life which makes others see the beauty of it. This movie is so Beautiful!

Rating:
Summary: Still makes me cry
Review: This movie is so powerful. I have watched it over 20 times and I still cry. I spent a semester doing extensive study on the holocaust and this movie really captured hope and love which were still present in this tragic time of our world.

Rating:
Summary: it can't get any better than this
Review: this is a big must-have for movie fans, and a perfect gift in any occasion. a Jew, blessed with an enormous talent, in words or actions, he turns things from worse to good, from good to better, for his love, later to be his wife, and his dearest Kid.