Jakob which was completed before Mr. Benigni s film is less successful in the end than Life, but is in some respects a more interesting movie. For one thing, Jakob is a wonderfully complex character, far darker, angrier and less self-satisfied than the angelic clowns that have made Mr. Williams famous. Jakob does display a mordant sense of humor, as do his equally depressed neighbors suffering under Nazi oppression in a Polish ghetto. Gallows humor fits right into the dying community. The threat of deportment to concentration camps hangs over the ghetto like deadly fog.
Suicides are everyday incidents.
Into this parched emotional landscape, Jakob introduces a shred of news from the outside world that he overheard by accident. The effect is galvanizing. His friends become convinced that he has a hidden radio and turn him into a hero. Jakob does succumb to his friends pleas and starts making up stories full of hopeful war news. As the story unwinds, it becomes clear that this is not a heroic fable, but an an existential puzzle.