The most emotional film I've ever viewed

Rating: 10/10 (18 April 2012)

Life Is Beautiful is one of the best examples of the personal and subjective nature of film criticism. I find reviews to be most useful when they help prepare me to enjoy a film (or at least tell me how much I'll enjoy it), so I'll do that before analyzing and judging the film.
Watch this when you're in the mood for tragicomedy. First spend some time thinking, and maybe reading, about the worst parts of the holocaust, but prepare yourself for a romanticized telling of it. Think back to the slapstick and "cute" comedies that made you happiest as a child (Saturday morning cartoons for most of us) and take some time to be nostalgic.
If you're too jaded to spend two hours being sentimental or too snobbish to appreciate an unusual perspective of history, then do yourself a favor and forget about this film. Otherwise, get ready for a beautiful experience.
---------- No film has ever impacted me as emotionally as Life Is Beautiful. I already give it 10/10 just for making me cry. From me, that response to a work of art is the highest and most elusive measure of artistic success. (This is one of the mere 5 films in existence that I give 10/10.) But it did more than that; I experienced something I had never felt in my life, regarding fiction or reality.
I take the extent to which Life Is Beautiful offends critics obtusely obsessed with realistic treatment of the holocaust as a partial measure of its success. Benigni aptly leaves most of the victims' suffering to my imagination. As an intelligent viewer who doesn't need to be spoon-fed history (a fact that Benigni utilizes), I recognize cruel irony and jubilant defiance in Guido's whimsical humor. Allusion accomplishes more for me emotionally than explicit depiction because it prompts me to imagine horrors that the screen cannot convey. When Guido explains the game to Joshua, I feel internally destroyed precisely because said allusions make me feel like I "secretly" know what happens behind the scenes.
Eschewing of suffering and graphic portrayal of it each have their place, and I highly respect the artist who can move me to suffer along with a fictional victim by depicting torture of the victim. Since they each have their own uses and appropriate settings, neither is necessary right or wrong; they just accomplish different emotions. In this case, Guido's defiance of his situation is a bold choice that achieves the best possible emotional result, which is my definition of artistic success.
The cartoonish humor of the first part is entertaining and endearing. Having grown up on Saturday morning cartoons, I feel sentimentally nostalgic and childishly bubbly about its comedy. Above all, I care about the characters not because I feel intellectually obligated to empathize with them for being humans, but because I genuinely like them.
A contrast exists between two elements of the film: the clear delineation between the unrelated plots of part 1 and of part 2, and the unbroken continuity of the film's joyful spirit and of Guido's character. It tells me that the human experience is a unified whole. Joy and suffering do not exist independently of each other; it is the same person throughout all the emotions. Guido's choice to respond the way he does makes him who he is. The juxtaposition of the contrast between situations with the comparison between respective stages in character development tell me who he is.
Fundamentally, Life Is Beautiful gives me a sense of joy that I feel as my own, rather than happiness that feels fabricated. It connects with my own experience and uses brilliant irony to evoke in me the sting of regret and fear -- and then make me feel like I personally triumphed over tragedy.