We'll take the bus back, okay?

Rating: 8/10 (15 August 2005)

One of the first shots of La Vita è bella / Life Is Beautiful is when Guido (Roberto Benigni) and his friend Ferrucio (Sergio Bini Bustic) are driving their car through the beautiful countryside. Ferrucio reads a poem, Guido listens, the car brakes fail, but Guido thinks it is part of the story. It is the whole movie in a nutshell and a prelude of things to come. As a result of the brake failure they enter the village where he is hailed as The Great Dictator, in a scene meant as a tribute to that movie. Later we have the two children Adolf and Benito fighting on the bench. And the rather funny scene where Guido explains what it means to be Arian to the children as fake inspector.
The first half shows the simple life in an Italian village, with Guido falling in love with Dora (Nicoletta Braschi). The rise of fascism is told as a background story first, but soon invades every facet of life. Guido later has married Dora and they have a child Giosué (Giorgio Cantarini). Guido has set up a book store (a reference to the burning of books by the Nazis). The second part starts with the train transport of all, with Guido commenting on the train ride to his son: It's the kind of risky humor that Benigni uses by mocking the whole Nazi-regime and its procedures. We see this again when the camp rules are translated by Guido.
Of course this is not a real concentration camp, Benigni abstracts the horrors (almost nothing is shown) to make the Nazis look ridiculous in their manners and behavior. Guido remains more or less the same human he was in Italy, only his environment changes and that makes the dehumanizing of the Nazi-victims only more poignant. The movie also keeps the Nazis consistently inhuman as there is not one human aspect in the whole movie to be seen of them. Even the friendly Dr. Lessing is turned in a non-human (He only saves Guido for his own riddles, and shows no interest in saving Dora). And the movie also works by showing only the perspective of one family that almost breathes life. But the movie is too long in the beginning and lingers somewhat (the uncle's house for example). It all feels like watching a movie from the 40s or 50s, even in the acting and direction.
When this movie came out, there was some debate about whether it was ethical to make a comedy about concentration camps. Roberto Benigni knew he took an enormous risk with this movie, and in lesser comedy hands this would not have worked out the way it did. But as art is all about taking risks, he was correctly rewarded for a new addition to coping with the history of the holocaust. As time will pass, probably still other ways will be found to tell this story.