NO, life is not always beautiful (some spoilers ahead)

Rating: 2/10 (29 January 2002)

*SPOILERS*
For me, there is a very obvious dividing point between the two parts of this movie: the scene where Dora comes home with her mother and realises her family has been deported. From then on, from that open door showing a devastated and empty apartment that painfully jerks you back from the fairylike world of comic knights rescuing princesses in puffy pink, nothing can be the same; yet the makers of this movie carry on as though it were. The first part works just fine in its way (that of course depends on whether you like Benigni's style at all or not), although it is pretty inferior to his other films. The second is quite simply awful. Fairytales can be incredibly cruel (and most of them in fact are), and there is nothing a priori wrong with trying to present a concentration camp situation in terms of a fairytale (although I suspect you'd need incredibly good writing and a totally different kind of actor). The problem is, here it was done badly and in a completely wrong way, because they had failed to understand they could not use the SAME fairytale as in the first half. As a result, what we actually get is a Viennese operetta. One feels one is watching `Die Fledermaus', complete with bumbling soldiers and in-and-out-of-the-prison-cell shenanigans.
The whole premise - telling the kid it's all a game and acting up to support the lie - that so many found noble and heart-rending, is for me simply beyond stupid and irresponsible. I can almost hear a chorus whining: `Awww. but he's doing it for the kiiid.!' It matters zilch whether he's doing something `for the kid' (filmmakers so often assume that they can simply put a child in the movie, and the audience immediately send their brains on a tropical holiday; sadly, it works); what matters is WHAT he is doing. And what he does here would have killed his son, himself, and many of his comrades (incidentally, it is made so very obvious that they really don't mean anything to him; what are so many lives compared with his own child's dubious emotional comfort? Their survival literally depended on understanding the camp rules, but of course they have to be made unwilling participants in a silly game devised for one child's benefit - and it's not even that - instead. So where is this humanism everyone is gushing about?) within the first few weeks. There are two things he could have done, for different reasons: he could either simply have told his son the truth, and thereby equipped him for at least trying to survive (after all, it's a very smart child, as we learn from the first part - although how a smart child would have gone for months believing Guido's story in that environment is beyond me) and prevented him from unknowingly jeopardizing others; or lied to him to shield him psychologically before inevitable death comes. Perhaps a fatalist would indeed have chosen the second option, but only an idiot would have mistaken it for a survival strategy, and from then on Guido looks more like a real fool than a clown playing one.
There are some powerful scenes in there: uncle Eliseo helping up a female guard who has tripped while herding him into the gas chamber; the riddle-obsessed doctor asking Guido for help (although you can see that one coming from miles away), but they are lost in all the incongruous clowning and sentimental schlock - like the inexcusable scene of Guido making a whole idiotic speech to his wife on the camp's loudspeaker system. Even leaving aside the implausibility of his ever getting the chance, the sheer stupidity of the very idea, and the certainty that he and Giosue' would have been killed on the spot for such a transgression (before that, we heard how every child is to be killed, and so Giosue' is hidden, yet now the Nazis find him happily babbling into the microphone and nothing happens?! Are we all supposed to be on the toilet at this point and so not notice?) - what is the purpose of that speech?! Having the oh-so-cute line `Buongiorno, principessa!' and similar inanities that just don't belong there repeated yet again? For the purpose of letting her know they're still alive, one word would have been enough. In the end, even his death somehow manages to seem unreal. Instead of shaken and saddened, I was left rather relieved I did not have to support this selfish and foolish person's annoying presence on the screen anymore.
"La vita e' bella" contains a lot of superficial "joie de vivre", and doesn't want us to think much, as though encountering unspeakable evil were the same thing as grabbing a quick bite; and this movie is a cinematic equivalent of a pizza fast food chain.