winner grand jury prize cannes 1998
dir. roberto begnini
st. roberto begnini, nicoletta braschi, giorgio cantarini
screening at: Palace cinemas Norton St.
Life is Beautiful is a daring, original and funny film that dares to treat comically what is arguably the most horrific occurrence of the twentieth century. It is admirable that a film in this black and white moral age dares to play Nazism in colour, yet in Life is Beautiful there is a slight discrepancy between Begnini's ambitions and his execution, the gap that here separates a good from a great film. There is something too concrete here, something which is not playful at all. The premise is fantastic, yet its brilliance remains fixed at this "pitch" stage, unable to translate itself into a worthy cinematic language. The film, most crucially in the second half, is more about life as a glorious game than cinema as the game itself.
For all the audacity of the film's second half, the first is by far the cleverer and more enjoyable. All character development and plotting takes place in a silent comedy ant-farm, a five setting world of glorious inter-connectedness. Little jokes and set-ups are brought to glorious fruition in a seduction scene, where all the world swoons to the efficacy of our hero, his honesty and ingenuity everlasting(satiric?). Here the inevitable arrival of Fascism is playfully subverted by Guido, who prefers to explain the dominance of the Italians by displaying his bellybutton to a class of schoolchildren. Even when his uncle's horse is painted green and covered in anti-semitic graffiti, he underplays the racism and uses the horse to take his princess away to glory. Once we get into the concentration camps however, the game becomes a little bit too literal and unbelievable, and it is here that Begnini falters as a filmmaker. When the Nazis are clearing the camp at the end of the film Guido and his son attenpt to hide once more, frequently running out into the open in full sight of the Nazis. Do they see them? Have the Nazis joined the game? The Nazis were obsessed with order and book-keeping, and no-one ever got out of being numbered and finally discarded. It is hard for us to believe that Guido could hide his son and never let anyone find him. Is this magic realism or just sloppy staging? The film is full of these ambiguities.
What I appreciate is Begnini's honesty, especially in his portrayal of the relationship between Guido and Dora. When he escorts her home and attempts to seduce her, he avoids all the typical gush about the moon and the stars and destiny. Instead he playfully admits his lust for her, making him admirable and charmingly forward. For a man whose whole life revolves around maintaining a gargantuan fraud, Guido is constantly lucid and realistic. Guido's clarity is constantly held up against the luxuriant banality of the Nazis, especially Guido's old friend Doctor Lessing, now a Nazi stooge visiting his camp to conduct examinations. Lessing, a fan of riddles, is so enraptured in his games that Guido is only important to him as a foil. The whole holocaust is a glittering pursuit of nothing; why not treat it with absurdist disdain.
"Shall I project a world?" is a question we all have to ask ourselves regularly, but the cinema is not a random and uncontrollable universe; it is a construction. I do not raise this point as a revelation, but rather as a truism. Rather than round out the film in an obvious finale, Begnini needs to become more flippant, more irreverent. When those American tanks plow through the tall brick walls to save the day, the thin line between comedy and farce is at last torn down. The film remains flawed yet noble, a compromised achievement. Ultimately, this is not a bad thing, and the film will stand out as one of my more memorable cinema experiences of the last six months.
adam rivett
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