Was everyone watching the same movie as me?

Rating: Null/10 (17 August 1999)

I am shocked to see so many negative comments about "Life is Beautiful." I was mesmerized by it, and think it is the best movie I have seen in a long, long time. Many people on this site have criticized the film for "making light" of the holocaust. "Life is Beautiful" certainly didn't lead me to think that the holocaust "wasn't so bad."
Sure, a lot of the movie was not believable. It didn't have to be. I thought the whole point of it was to show that, despite the atrocities, people persevered through small acts of bravery. For anyone who wants to compare this movie with "Shindler's List", don't. They are both spectacular, but they are two very different films. Benigni doesn't hit you over the head with the horrible conditions in the camp. Instead, he implies a lot, and focuses instead on the love of a father for his family, and his intense desire to protect them. If some aspects of life in a concentration camp are portrayed as less severe, I don't think it detracts from the film's message at all.
Instead, the most frightening aspects of the holocaust are shown in the faces of the characters. Recall the scene where Dora learns that the children are to be killed. Or where Guido discovers that the doctor is not interested at all in helping him, but is concerned with a riddle that he would like Guido to solve. When Dora is sorting the clothing of the older Jews who have been murdered, I kept expecting her to come across the clothes of Guido's uncle, and from her face, I think she did too. It is a credit to Benigni that he didn't go for melodrama in this scene, but instead focused on Guido's message to Dora over the loudspeaker.
I think too often we tend to focus on what happens to people instead of how they deal with what happens to them. This movie made me feel more angry about this part of our history than any other film I've seen, but it also made me feel very hopeful. Benigni, without detracting one bit from the horror of what happened to them, makes heroes out of victims.
If you haven't seen this movie, SEE IT (in its subtitled version)! But if what you see is a "comedy" about the holocaust, then you're missing the point....