I don't get those who don't get it...

Rating: 9/10 (15 November 2008)

This film is as beautiful as life according to the title. Undoubtedly, it will have added to my overall appreciation and understanding that I am Italian and did not need to see this subtitled, but even so, I am frankly staggered to find that so many people were outraged by this sweet, tender little gem of a film, one (the one who finally convinced me to write this) even going so far as to brand it fascist propaganda.
La Vita E' Bella is anything but fascist. It if were, it would condone Nazism, which it never does - nor does it belittle its crimes, and the sufferings of thousands of innocents during WWII.
What it does is tell the story, heart-warming and -wrenching at the same time, of a man who so dearly loves his son that he will not have him tainted by the horrors of the concentration camp, and thus does every thing he can think of to make the little boy believe that the corpses around him are just pretending, just taking part in a complex game where people only look like they get shot and hurt.
Why would Benigni, I wonder, go to such pains to invent a whole new reality for his child, if he did not fully comprehend and condemn the terrible events as they really happened? Calling this revisionism is just plain silly; the film is not trying to re-write history. It is simply showing how, through the force of fatherly love, an innocent may be taught to smile, and hope, and never to despair. If that's not a message worthy of the big screen I don't know what is.
If you haven't watched this film, please approach it without prejudice. Approach it not as a slanderous lie, but as the story of how imagination may save a human soul.