In Robert Benigni's Classic, Life is Indeed Beautiful, Regardless of Where It is Lived!

Rating: 9/10 (5 May 2015)

In his heartrending Holocaust dramedy, Roberto Benigni brilliantly plays Guido, a die-hard romantic in fascist WWII Italy, who falls in love with his idealized incarnation of femininity - Dora (Nicoletta Braschi) - through a series of coincidental and surreptitiously intentional meetings. While Fascist forces grow in power around them, he woos her with magical imagination; so shamelessly sincere in his earthly motivations that at times he seems to levitate while expressing himself. He even rides a horse into her engagement party to rescue her from a loveless union with a hulking fascist bureaucrat, as we witness his romantic honesty transcend every spastic goof he involuntarily makes. In a flash Guido's wish comes true. Guido's marriage to Dora introduces the couple's jovial five- year-old son Joshua (an endearing Giorgio Cantarini) into their 'beautiful life'.
But soon the film takes a fearsome turn. Guido, who is Jewish, and his little boy are arrested by the Nazis and the gentile Dora insists on climbing aboard the same train, bound for a concentration camp. From the moment they are arrested, Guido turns his charm and imagination to the desperate task of shielding his son from the truth of their horrific reality. He constructs an elaborate fantasy, convincing the boy that everything is indeed fine and that they are playing a great game, and that all their hardships will earn points that will add up to the ultimate prize – a real tank. Regardless of how much Joshua comes to doubt his father's idyllic framing of the horrors that surround them, Guido never lets down the pretense. In his constant battle to hold his son's imagination, he seems like a knight defending a castle. Humor is the only tool he has to deflect death, torture and the threat of discovery.
And that's how Robert Benigni is able to maintain what would seem an improbable balance: the film wins heartfelt laughs through his gentle buffoonery and quick-witted fibs while never once downplaying the inhumane horror of the concentration camp situation. Each laugh comes with the lingering threat of death, which Benigni vividly yet fairly subtly depicts, brilliantly combining slapstick comedy with nuanced social commentary about the Holocaust. He effectively creates a situation in which comedy is courage. And he draws from this an unpretentious, enormously likable film that plays with history both seriously and mischievously.
But what makes Life is Beautiful memorable is not its laughs or sense of reality, but its huge heart - a simple, timeless, uplifting tale of the indomitability of humanity even in the midst of inhumanity. Life Is Beautiful manages to walk the extremely thin line between humor, fantasy, and tragedy with astounding grace.