A sub-Chaplin farce that Le Pen would enjoy.

Rating: Null/10 (25 April 2002)

Roberto Benigni was enjoyable in two Jim Jarmusch films, 'Down by Law' (1985) & 'Night on Earth' (1991); his wife, Nicoletta Braschi was great in 'Mystery Train' (1987)- which was a massive influence on 'Pulp Fiction' (1994).
This film, as with the more MOR of what people deem arthouse ('Cinema Paradiso', 'Il Postino', 'Manon des Sources'), attracted awards and acclaim. Er...did I miss something?
*SPOILERS* The first half is a poor blend of sub-Chaplin farce shot in the style of 'Il Postino': all lush colours & the agrarian dream that Himmler sold the German masses. We are meant to see how idyllic life was before the nasty facsists came in and started painted anti-Jewish slogans on horses (?). Perhaps the uneducated viewers ought to read Primo Levi's 'The Periodic Table', or watch 'Christ Stopped at Eboli', or, if they want to capture the psychopathology of fascism- watch Pasolini's 'Salo'. With fascism always going through rises in popularity- see Mussolini's daughter, Le Pen or the BNP targeting the ignorant underclass- anyone dealing with it as a theme should be clear about its negative qualities. We should see the causes- not poor sight gags & hammy acting.
The second half of the film is worse- many critics wondered if Benigni was trying to make a joke out of the Holocaust. Was he trying to prove the maxim from Woody Allen's 'Crimes & Misdeameanours': "tragedy plus time equals comedy"?. Because the Holocaust is probably the one thing that this could never apply to. In fact, to deal with a depiction of the Holocaust directly- to portray a Concentration Camp- is impossible. The illusion of cinema cannot relate the actualities of the horror. So, 'The Truce' was a failure- while 'Schindler's List' is more offensive than this film: being made to get that elusive Oscar from a pseudo-guilty jury awarding the Holocaust, not the film, in a manner most offensive. 'Life is Beautiful' has risible scenes of lager-occupants passing anvils to each other & a series of fun games in the realm of the final solution. Holocaust-deniers would love this...Benigni comes across a pile of bodies, prior to a sub-Allo Allo scene involving a searchlight. This simply does not work- a sole serious scene in a poor comedy does not translate the depth of horror. This is cheap, in the manner that 'The Night Porter' is- do Italians not comprehend what Nazi-ism was? (I have read apolegetic letters in British papers stating that Fascism wasn't as bad in Italy as it was in Germany- because being deported to Auschwitz-Birkenau & lying shot in a gutter in Salo is an amusing comic jape in the mode of this film?).
In Primo Levi's 'If This is a Man?' the deportees are told "there is no why"- a horrifying term that brings the nightmare world of Kafka to life. Benigni's film fails to bring that horror to the viewer; as Spielberg's film made the most offensive scene I have witnessed palatable: the shower that meant death to the majority of deportees was transformed into...a shower. And the problem is viewers 50 years later, watching this as some sort of self-pitying schaudenfraude, unquestionably accepting these kind of films. Mistaking the acts contained with the quality of the film; but there are no fictional images that could capture this. The only films that capture the Holocaust- and should be seen by all and played in schools rather than this film or 'Schindler's List'- are 'Nuit et Brouillard' by Alain Resnais and the epic-'Shoah'.
We all know history depicted on the screen is fiction and that elements of history are as tenuous as fiction- but there is no doubt about what the Nazi Concentration Camps did. And this film does not fight the constant spectre of fascism- it merely makes its audience feel a little fake empathetic guilt before turning the film off or leaving the cinema to enjoy the freedom they enjoy.
This is one of the worst films ever made 0/10.