A truly beautiful fable, no more, no less.

Rating: 10/10 (8 June 1999)

Life is Beautiful is the first movie in years to make me cry, and the first ever that I freely admit. In addition to it's powerful story, there are hardly any artistic flaws to be found. Benigni's slapstick feels like homage to others, but his personal charisma (and sheer cuteness) inject it with new life. The cinematography is excellent, the site gags all work, and even the youngest member of the primary cast was a believable actor. The story itself? There are no words for how powerful, even life changing it is. Pulling you in all directions at once, crushing beauty with atrocity and then injecting joy into the most despairing of conditions, the film manages to raise so many genuine emotions and leave viewers haunted with it's message.
And yet, there are legitimate questions raised by it's detractors, who often feel as if the merit of the story is lost by presenting what could be viewed as a too sanitized version of the Holocaust. As is said in the beginning of the film, the story is a fable, and I view it much as I did the play _The Crucible_. In _Crucible_, many details of the events in Salem were changed, many to make the tale easier for modern audiences to understand and accept, without being so shocked that more subtle intent is lost. Though it makes it less respectable as history retold, it does not take away from the powerful moral to be gained. Similarly, in leaving the true horrors of the concentration camps to our imaginations, Life is Beautiful allows us to become involved more strongly with the moral tale and subtle feelings invoked by individual characters and events without bludgeoning us with sheer horror and revulsion. Holocaust history does demand the most respect of any historic tragedy, and perhaps too much is assumed of the audience's knowledge, but by focusing on a single idealized story this film can influence the heart in ways that the incomprehensible magnitude and surreal horror of the Holocaust often cannot when presented as numbers in a textbook or even the anonymous agony on newsreel. Personally, I found it to evoke greater revulsion towards the relatively smaller losses and understated horrors then many other likeminded films do towards more accurate portrayals of great atrocity.
While not a perfect film, Life is Beautiful is easily one of the best and most powerful ever made when viewed in the proper light, and above all else, its moral shines as a important reminder of how precious- not to mention beautiful, life is.