My Favorite Films: Life Is Beautiful

La vita è bella (Life Is Beautiful) (1997)

Director: Roberto Benigni

Context:
Roberto Benigni started his film career as an actor, finding himself in clownish, happy-go-lucky roles that often matched his own personality.  During the 90s, he used his established clout with director Jim Jarmusch as well as screenwriter Vincenzo Cermani to write, direct, and star in his own film.  Based on his own father's three-year internment at a Nazi concentration camp, Benigni set out to explore the horrors of the Holocaust through the lens of an eternally optimistic character.

They say that comedy equals tragedy plus time.  While there may never be enough time to ever view the Holocaust as a comedic event, Benigni skillfully crafted a hero whose good humor was his sole reason to continue surviving.  We end up with a deeply tragic tale that nevertheless provides many laughs because, in the face of terror, we must not lose our humanity.

Plot:
The clever and playful Guido Orefice finds himself navigating life in Italy as the presence of Nazi-occupied Germany looms overhead.  When he and his young son are taken to a concentration camp, he must convince his child that they are all playing an elaborate game with strict rules in order to shield him from the atrocities.

Analysis:
While I am no historian, I do know that Benigni takes several liberties to get his characters through this horrible situation. And the were several critics who took issue with Benigni "making light" of this serious event.  So rather, I'm just looking at the story we are presented with, because I feel the whole package is wonderful on its own and it only encourages its audience to reconnect with history.

The film is precisely split into two halves.  The first half takes place in 1939, where Guido arrives in an Italian city to start working as a waiter for his uncle.  Through coincidence, he starts literally bumping into a young teacher named Dora who he immediately greets with "Good morning, Princess" and starts a playful interaction with her.  She's at first mildly amused by this foolish man, but as circumstances keep playing out in his favor to keep the "Princess fantasy" alive, she becomes charmed by his wit and persistence.

Overall, the first half would just make a delightful romantic comedy and it could stand alone as a short film.  Every scene virtually acts as a set up for moments later when he needs to impress her.  For example, early on, we see one of his neighbors call to his landlord Mary to toss out the key to let him into his building.  Later on, while Guido is traveling with Dora, she states that she doesn't open up easily and needs a special key to unlock her true feelings.  Guido notices that they are right under Mary's window so he makes a big show about praying to the Virgin Mary so that she may send down the key (and the landlord Mary follows her natural habit).  Moments like that compose the whole first half, which makes things fun and charming throughout.

It also establishes the kind of person our hero Guido is.  He is not dumb.  He just makes the best of any situation and he relies on his luck and quick wit to bet him out of any jam.  But even he can be knocked down a peg.  When he learns that Dora is engaged to the hateful banker that he failed to get a loan from earlier (and accidentally humiliated him in the process), Guido can't think straight and loses his tact, believing he has been defeated.  It is only when Dora shows him that she has chosen to be with him instead that he regains his "powers," highlighting the other important element of his character.  He is bonded to those that he loves.

Throughout the first half, the growing tension of the Nazi stronghold appears, starting in the background and working their way into the foreground.  In fact, the first "joke" of the film comes when Guido arrives in town on a car with faulty breaks.  He appears just as the crowd is awaiting a respected Nazi officer and as he waves his arm to tell people to get out of the way, they assume he is making a Nazi salute and cheer his presence.  This "bumbling into horror" aspect will become a strong theme of the second half of the film, but it's set up quickly to let viewers know just what they are getting themselves into.

Guido is like a modern day Charlie Chaplin or Buster Keaton character, in that sense.  He only has pure and good morals and lets the situations play around him as he amusingly navigates through with broad physical comedy and intelligent tricks.  Having the villains be Nazis makes his commentary and stunts extra powerful.

The second half picks up about 5 years later, as Guido and Dora have a son named Joshua, who has definitely picked up the personality traits and habits of his parents.  We see a little bit of their new life before Guido, Joshua, and Guido's uncle are ordered onto a truck that will put them on a train to the camps.  Dora pleads to join them so as not to be separated from her family (although they do become separated at the camp).  Guido launches into his elaborate ruse immediately and out of habit when Joshua expresses confusion about why they are dropping all of their plans to board an overcrowded truck.  Guido himself only knows part of the truth, so one could see his lies as his own coping mechanism to disassociate from what is happening.

Once the characters get to the camp, the audience never explicitly sees the death and torture present all around them (save for one poignant shot towards the end).  The audience mostly follows Joshua who is being protected from the truth and we must rely on our own knowledge to fully understand what is happening.  For example, it is established earlier in the film that Joshua hates taking baths and showers, so he naturally hides from the guards when they order all the kids to shower.  Guido reprimands Joshua for disobeying and later we see the women's camp collecting all the abandoned clothes outside of the showers, but the movie places the burden on the audience to know our history.

It's tactics like this that I believe make the film work.  We allow ourselves to laugh because we understand the heavy irony in each situation but it's never over the top.  There's never a moment where Guido makes a joke about taking showers or (when he finally sees the corpses) a moment where he talks about what had happened.  It's all internal and understood by him and the audience.  The best way I can explain how this humor works is by looking at an example of a joke that doesn't.  In James Cameron's Titanic, there was a rightfully deleted scene that made the rounds a year or so ago, featuring Kathy Bates's character rudely complaining to her waiter that she wants "more ice" in her drink as the iceberg drifts by in the background.  That is a tasteless joke.  It was a cheap pun that would have been funny had that not been a story about the actual iceberg that killed hundreds of people.  Life Is Beautiful avoids this type of humor.

The only truly "laugh out loud" moments of the second half of the film are when the Nazis themselves are the butt of the joke.  For example, when a guard shows up on the first day they arrive to explain the rules of their new living conditions, he requires a German-Italian translator.  Guido, to protect his son, volunteers so that he can amend the rules to make it sound like a big game of hide and seek and he also throws in a couple jabs about the guard's idiocy and appearance for good measure.   The Italian captives are confused, Joshua is delighted, and the German guards are none the wiser.  Afterwards, Guido instructs one of the other prisoners to actually tell people the truth.  This is a brilliant moment that allows Guido's optimism to find the bright side of the situation while still retaining the gravity of what is actually happening.  In fact, for most of the jokes in the second half, it's like we are getting breaks from the sadness before returning to reality.

Lastly, in keeping with the romance of the first half, Guido spends as many moments as he can to connect with his Princess Dora.  Although they cannot physically be together, he risks his life to send her messages.  While these moments aren't particularly funny, they are sweet and heartwarming and brutal.

Final Thoughts:
While your view on the mixture of tragedy and comedy may vary, I feel Benigni's product was a huge success.  It allows it's audience to appreciate what they have in their lives and it may potentially change one's perspective on how they approach the world.  Life is beautiful, even if it can be hard to see it sometimes.