Okay, but not as great as it might have been.

Rating: 1/10 (5 November 1998)

There seems to be a fair amount of controversy surrounding this film, but after seeing it I have only a bare glimpse of why. Sure, it is something of a light-hearted tale set in a death camp and one can see why offense might be taken at that premise alone, but the humor is not used to make light of the situation, but rather serves as factor that mitigates the horror for us and for the boy who it is directed at in the film. I do think that Benigni could have made the death camp scenes darker as that would have made the contrast created by his behavior stand out all the more. The Nazis never achieve the truly commanding status they must have occupied in reality, instead they come off as dull buffoons which is something that might have been reconciled to create a better film. But then we must remember the function of the framing device which locates perspective on the young boy, so we have now a tension between what we know of the reality of the situation and the fantasy world that Benigni creates for his son. This is an interesting tension, but it is never drawn out fully enough. In only one shot do we ever get a sense of the loss of life that was the eventual outcome of these camps, and even then it exists in sort of a dreamscape so it is hard to say whether or not it really existed at all. If the scenes of Benigni away from his son had contained more horror the film might have been more able to build on the fantasy versus reality theme that seems so crucial here. Since this is the boy's story, the scenes of Benigni away from him lay outside the realm of his personal memory, so they exist as constructions implying that either the son has extended the cloud of fantasy retro-actively over things he learned about the camp or the filmmakers did not wish to break the aura that they created. I would tend to think of the latter as a the more probable cause. Benigni is crafting a fable here and applies a "fable-istic" aura to all of the proceedings, but frames the story in the perspective of the boy (post-Holocaust) thus opening the possibility to break down the wall of fantasy and insert scenes of tragedy that might have made Benigni's act all the more heroic. This criticism aside, there are quite affecting moments in the film. In the moment Dora chooses the forsake all for her family and follow them to the death camp, Benigni has created a piece of pure, selfless melodrama that illustrates the ties that bound families together in that time. We know Benigni must die, and thus the scene of his death is oddly unaffecting. But by pairing it with the coming of the tank at the end Benigni has made both moments all the more affecting. Life is Beautiful is not a great film. It might have been, but it never really explores the battle between fantasy and reality that is the core of the film. Fantasy wins out and reality only makes a few insertions making what could have been a truly uplifting homage to the human spirit somewhat dulled. Not dulled enough to consign it into the realm of mediocrity however, as there are enough good moments to make this a film worth watching. Benigni's courtship of Dora is quite sweet, even if I find the Benigni character a bit overblown for this film.