A comedy that lacks brilliance and respect

Rating: Null/10 (10 November 1998)

Would "Life is beautiful" have had so good reviews, had there not been part of the movie about the holocaust ? I really doubt it. This movie is only a dull comedy that lacks brilliance and is based on rather silly gags. It is also flatly shot. But the real bad part on that movie is that by showing the concentration camnps as it does, it lets the audience think that the Holocaust was not so terrible after all. Begnini shows the concentration camp as if it was the Warsaw ghetto : people are working hard and some die in the process, but the very idea that there were some gas chambers working in order to annihilate millions of people is hardly evoked. The very fact that the little Giuseppe survives with so little trouble is hardly acceptable when one knows how mercilessly children were exterminated. Of course, some passages of the movie are full of emotion, but they are only minutes in a two-hour movie for which Begnini lacks the necessary tact to use such a subject. If I do believe that his intentions were pure and noble when he shot this movie, I hardly appreciate the intense marketing surrounding it. It does lack respect towards such a grave and important matter.