It's all in the name.
I’m teetering carelessly on the brink of sleep; my eyelids weigh a few kilograms each right now and the only thing that’s keeping me awake right now is a bowl of grapefruit pulp and the sound of the keyboard. I’m making myself write this not out of any self-spite of forcefulness, but out of excitement and the need to get my thoughts on this film out of me.
I’ve always found Roberto Benigni an odd sort of character, which if you know me at all is a great praise. His parts in some of Jim Jarmusch’s films have an eccentricity that ranges from awkwardness to a jabbering devil-may-care bomb, but I hadn’t watched any of his directorial work yet. Last night, on a warm Thursday night with a large bowl of chips covered with Sriracha sauce, I watched Life is Beautiful (1997) and I was in the grips of uncontrollable laughter all the way till where I was in tears in the final fifteen minutes of the film. Staring in his own film, because who else could better play his character of the happy-go-lucky comic Italian better than him, he plays the madcap Guido who keeps “running into” his princess and falls in love with her. Eventually opening a bookstore in Nazi occupied Italy, as a Jew it wasn’t long until the oppression began. The inevitable train ride to the concentration camp found him and his family on the rails. In the camp with his young son, he turns their whole experience into a game where the winner receives a tank, of course to pacify his kids poking questions and complaints, ensuring his survival. Despite the grim change of tone that flips to the second half, the comedic tone continues and is exactly what gets them through the harrowing nightmares that await them in the camp. Here is a man who sees beauty, fun and opportunity within everything he sees in life and knows how to embrace it, in a film that’s as beautiful as the title, he pursues his hopes, even in the face of ugly insurmountable odds.
Although camera wise, the film is rather simple and captures exactly what Benigni wants us to see – apart from some wonderfully framed shots of Guido and his friend Ferruccio and the grand shot of the red carpet rolling down a rainy staircase – where it really shines is in the comedy, acting and how they bear the story.
Every single comic element has impeccable timing, built earlier in the film, by the time they mature and are called back on, they flow from one into another like clockwork. Little digs at the fascism on the rise during the war pokes its tongue out to the sensibilities of the fools who thought it a brilliant idea to side with Hitler, but the film isn’t an overtly political, it isn’t about fascism or genocide and death camps or Nazi’s, it’s a film about the steely perseverance of the human spirit. Through the heart-warming, saddening and harrowing waves of the film, his ability to produce bellowing laughter is amazing and creates a very wholesome tone.
Benigni’s off the wall and whimsically cranked acting with springy movements and a silver tongue, surrounded by very intimate and human performances from the rest of the cast, makes him stand out of course but he never overshadows the rest. They are a part of his story, his motives, his emotions and their wellbeing occupy a place in his hopes.
Plenty of people have taken to the film with some apprehension on softening the Holocaust with comedy, though I see where they’re coming from, both laughter and sorrow come from the same place in us and some people cope with something as terrible as this with laughter. Besides, the comedy in this isn’t directed towards any of the other souls in the camp, but to the ridiculous absurdity of their situation, their own experience. Laughter is acceptance, whether it be at the trick played on you and the acknowledgement of beauty or hilarity or horror or sorrow.
Regardless of what your opinions are on the film and its handling of the subject matter, it is daring in doing so and carries it out in a light-hearted and wholesome grace which is worthy of your attention.
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