Life Is Beautiful

Rating:
Summary: Abominable
Review: This film belittles the evil that is the Holocaust, as well as all victims and survivors. What's next, a film masking the reality of rape? Anyone giving this film a good rating is seriously desensitized to the realities of genocide.

There are plenty of other settings for the director to get his point across of offering hope to his son. Using the Holocaust in this manner is a disgrace. This is also a typical Hollywood film (I know its a foreign film) since it uses plenty of manipulative ploys to draw in an uncritical audience. This is Holocaust revisionism writ to celluloid. Have you ever seen a Holocaust survivor laughing and smiling like the idiot in this film.

Putting the kid in the tank was beyond reprehensible. The irony of that scene juxtaposed against the concentration camps and the understanding that the German blitzkrieg is what initiated WWII must be lost on the director and most clueless, antiseptic viewers.

This is the reality the film deliberately masks (then again maybe Benigni doesn't know it, doesn't want to know it, or doesn't believe it):

"There was a sign `to disinfection.' He said `you see,they are bringing children now.' They opened the door, threw the children in and closed the door. There was a terrible cry.

A member of the SS climbed on the roof. The people went on crying for about ten minutes. Then the prisoners opened the doors. Everything was in disorder and contorted. Heat was given off. the bodies were loaded on a rough wagon and taken to a ditch. The next batch were already undressing in the huts. After that I didn't look at my wife for four weeks."

From the testimony of SS private Boeck (Langbein, quoted in Pressac, Jean-Claude. Auschwitz: Technique and Operation of the Gas Chambers. NY: 1989, 181) .


Rating:
Summary: A Love Story In The Face Of Nazis!
Review: An Award Winning Film. My friends were reluctant to watch this movie at first, but afterwards they were grateful! This is a part comedy, part drama love story in Italy during WW2, as the Nazis approach and take over. It's a story of the existence of innocence and the struggle to maintain innocence and everything that is beautiful about life! Evil tries to overcome innocence and smother it, but it prevails! It's a lovely, delightful story of hope! If you speak English, there is an English Soundtrack available on the DVD! This is easily the Best Italian movie I have ever seen! The arrival of the tank near the end is "breathtaking"! A lovely movie! I want to see more of this Director/Actors movies!! And...ladies, he's so Handsome too!

Rating:
Summary: Truly Special!!!
Review: This movie is truly special. It is sweet, touching, inspiring, and sad. You will smile, you will cry. The inner beauty of the main charachters shines throughout the movie and even in the midst of a major tradgedy you cannot help but feel warmth in your heart for power of true love. Beautiful film! BRAVO!!!! HIGHLY RECOMMENDED!!!!

Rating:
Summary: Brilliant film, disappointing DVD
Review: After hundreds of reviews, there is no purpose in detailing the film's numrous merits yet again. The conception is unique and brilliant, and the execution of the idea a triumph.

Am I alone however, in being disappointed with the quality of the dvd? The only good thing is the audio - the original Italian, and the English dub are both included in 5.1 surround. Well done Miramax, none of the usual nonsense found in foreign film releases in which original language is either missing alltogether or presented in mono for some inexplicable reason.
The real problem is the video quality - it is VERY poor. This is a recent well budgeted film - it should look flawless, not like THIS... Furthermore, while it is presented in 'widescreen', it hasn't been transfered properly so if you have a widescreen television you will most likely see it heavily distorted. Poor job all around.

A film like this deserves much better.

Rating:
Summary: You would like it
Review: I had to watch this movie for a film class and glad I did. I only saw it one time. My inital thought is that this movie will make you really happy and really sad. I was emmotionally connected the whole time and I remember many scenes after watching it.

Rating:
Summary: Don't be afraid to watch this movie.
Review: I put off watching this movie until today because I was afraid of being upset. It's an excellent movie. It doesn't burn going down.

Rating:
Summary: Hauntingly incredible ...
Review: "Life Is Beautiful" is the tragic and poignant tale of Guido, an Italian Jew in a concentration camp with his small son. Guido creates a story to explain the horrors of the war and the camp by telling his son that the entire thing is a game to win a tank. His sacrifice is immense and Bengini acted superbly in this magnificent tale. The dubbed version and the subtitled version are both intense and amazing. Recommendations all around. The original Italian-language film won Oscars - for a reason. Absolutely wonderful and haunting. The images of war and the starvation and horrors of the Holocaust are not as severe as in "Schindler's List", for instance, but the film itself is brilliant.

Rating:
Summary: Genius at every turn...
Review: Roberto Benigni in this film has displayed genius about life. Life is about parents protecting their children from the holocaust and helping them survive. He showed genius in winning the love of his life, in protecting his son from the cruelty of others and in sacrificing himself for his son. Is slapstick appropriate for the subject ? It is when seen in the eyes of a father glancing at his son and knowing that these people will kill his son if he does not keep his son "in the game". I am a dad; I would do anything for my children... this is Benigni's genius...

Rating:
Summary: "Like a fable, there is sorrow...and wonder, and happiness."
Review: With this opening line, Roberto Benigni, Director, lead character, and writer (with Vincenzo Cerami) of this film, establishes its symbolic, rather than realistic, emphasis. Set in 1930s Italy, the film opens as a slapstick comedy, with the rubber-faced Benigni (who won the Academy Award as Best Actor for this role) playing Guido Orifice, a hyperactive clown, as he repeatedly surprises a beautiful young woman, acts as the clever hotel waiter, and attempts to exchange hats with men he meets.

Despite the frantic comedy, however, the fascist dictatorship and the growing anti-semitism loom constantly in the background, as Guido's uncle (Giustino Durano) is assaulted, his horse is painted green, and a local school principal talks about getting rid of defectives. After a lovely segue to represent the passage of six years or so, we again see Guido, now married to his beautiful Dora (Nicoletta Braschi), and meet Giosue Orifice, his son, winningly played by six-year-old Giorgio Cantorini. Totally committed to protecting his son from the horrors of anti-semitism, Giorgio turns everything into a joke.

When the family is eventually rounded up and shipped to a concentration camp, Guido turns the event into a "birthday surprise" for Giosue and tries to ensure his survival by pretending that all the events are part of a huge game, with the winner getting a full-sized tank. Disappearances from the camp are explained as people dropping out of the game.

In some ways, Guido's game-playing sets the reality of the concentration camps into sharp relief, intensifying the horror by showing the lengths to which a father will go to protect the innocence of his child. The viewer knows that the game is a pitiful, and ultimately hopeless, attempt to hold back the reality of the Final Solution but cannot help hoping that against all odds, somehow Guido and Giosue will win. The horrors of the Holocaust are obvious here, and the ironies of seeing both Guido and his captors all playing some sort of macabre "game" will not be lost on the viewer.

I thoroughly enjoyed Benigni's pratfalls, his touching attention to his family, the music (by Nicola Piovani, which also won an Academy Award), and the cleverness of the plot. But I also found that my realistic knowledge of the Holocaust was so overwhelming I could not "suspend [my] disbelief," and I was unable to appreciate the film as the wonder-filled "fable" Benigni intended. Mary Whipple