444 - Life is Beautiful, Italy, 1997. Dir. Roberto Benigni.
Guido Orefice is in love with life. Full of joy. With his arms spread out, open to the world.
Guido rides with his friend. On their way to Tuscany. To work for his uncle as a waiter.
The brakes go out.
The car leaves the road. Goes through the field. Down the hill. To the other road. Through the waiting throng. He waves at them. "We have no brakes!" They think he is saluting. They salute back. The one they are expecting shows up minutes later.
Guido and his friend stop at a farm. He talks to a girl in front of the barn. A woman falls out of the mow, the hayloft, and into Guido's arms. He catches her and they land in the hay. Guido is immediately up for this new challenge.
Her name is Dora. He calls her Princess. He calls himself Prince Guido. Everything he sees is his. Life itself is his.
Guido and his friends go on. They move into Guido's uncle's storage building. Guido begins working as a waiter in his uncle's restaurant.
He builds connections.
Each morning he passes under a window where a man calls out to Mary to drop down a key. He begins a game where he steals a man's black hat and replaces it with his tan one. He makes friends with a Doctor Lessing, who thinks of Guido as a genius for the riddles he devises.
He runs into Dora again.
And again.
Buongiorno, Principessa!
And begins to woo her.
Unfortunately for Guido, Dora is already engaged to a man. A rich man.
Fortunately for Guido, he is a bore.
He leaves the door open for Guido to enter. And Guido knows just how to keep running into her. Surprising her. And dazzling her.
Guido has the energy of a firecracker, the facial elasticity of a clown, the physicality of an acrobat, the playfulness of a child, the integrity of a man, and a faithful and loving soul. Guido is good.
In the first half of the film Guido builds relationships and woos Dora.
But then the film takes a different turn.
And in the second half, he uses his wit and charm to fight for survival. To protect his son. To love his wife.
Guido is Jewish. World War II breaks out. Italy switches sides in the war. The Nazi Germans infiltrate Tuscany. Guido is taken. His uncle is taken. His son is taken.
Guido's wife, who is Christian, in an act of love, refuses to be separated from them. She boards the train. Not knowing the destination. Not understanding what we would learn after the war. Not realizing that once they arrive at the concentration camps, she will not see them.
Guido devises a game to protect his son. Their goal is to win a tank. To win they need to acquire one thousand points. Each day they acquire points when Guido gives his son Giosue a task to do which protects his life.
The stress is visible in Guido's face. The concentration shows in Guido's eyes. The terror at one point, when Giosue slips up and nearly costs himself his life, hangs all over Guido like a blanket.
But he covers it. Presents hope and joy to his son. Maintains his optimism. Acts playfully in the midst of despair. Doubles down on the rules of the game.
Because he loves him.
Upon its release Life is Beautiful became the most successful Italian film up that time. It won multiple awards around the world. It was a triumph. Benigni was a hero.
He had used comedy to deal with one of the most serious subjects in history. To highlight goodness. And truth. And beauty. The human spirit fighting death. And hatred. And fear. And winning. Love winning.
Then there was a backlash. A backlash by critics who could not see the urgency in Benigni's acting. Or the scope of his writing. The fact that his own father had spent two years in a labor camp. Or that the film had been inspired by an Italian Jew named Romeo, Rubino Romeo Salmoni, who had been sent to Auschwitz, and who had used humor to survive.
The film is not perfect from a technical standpoint. Its cinematography is not above average. Its editing and pacing follow a comedic format. The physical gags are not always pulled off at the highest level, the way one remembers their prototypes being done in the silent slapstick days. Some of the acting by some of the actors is sometimes weak. But if one were to complain of a lack of depth, it would apply more to the romantic comedy half of the film than to the dramatic half. For the romantic comedy plays like a romantic comedy, where falling in love is easy as a breeze, but when they get to the camps, the burden does come. And weights down the good father. Yes, the film maintains a distance from reality, which Benigni wrote into the screenplay and worked into the film. An intentionally fictional distancing from historical accuracy. Which probably helped.
But the message of the film remains solid. And the dramatic impact earned its recognition. The backlash was inaccurate and overstated; the mass appreciation, deserved.
Guido's son Giosue remembers his time in the camp as an adult. Addressing us directly. Off-screen. In voice-over.
This is my story. This is the sacrifice my father made. This was his gift to me.
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