By placing Spielberg's locomotive in his own make-believe Auschwitz, Benigni crossed a border beyond which my aesthetic sensibility could not reach. Instead of being touched by the comic pathos I became increasingly aware of how contrived it all was. Most troubling is that Benigni uses the Holocaust as a cinematic device to provide the bitter background for his own sweet charm. He has been quite candid about this, explaining to interviewers that he wanted to put his comic persona into an extreme situation, and that for him the story of Life is Beautiful is meant to be a simple fable. So there will be no mistake, the audience hears a voice over at the beginning of the film that states this is a simple fable.
Beautiful one leads to troubling kinds of self-deception.
Imagine that Auschwitz is only a bad dream and that you could hold your child in your arms and make up a story with a happy ending to comfort him. Imagine your comforted child going back to sleep with a smile on his face. If there are God-like moments for parents they are of this kind, when you can comfort a frightened child. But sometimes their fears are real and your stories are not. His spontaneous human response captures the experience of most audiences, who feel deeply moved, even exalted by the film.