Roberto Benigni’s Holocaust fable earns its tenderness through an engaging courtship and a father’s desperate ingenuity. But it offers too much reassurance about the surrounding horror, leaving a moving film with a serious weakness.
Life Is Beautiful asks us to accept comedy as a father’s way of protecting his child from the Holocaust. Roberto Benigni, directing and starring as Guido, earns our attention through a romance whose silliness has purpose. We find the film affecting but too reassuring about the horror surrounding its family. The difficulty comes when his determination to comfort the child also governs how much distress the audience is permitted to feel.
The courtship gives Benigni room to be funny without having to justify every joke as an act of courage. His screenplay with Vincenzo Cerami establishes Guido’s inventiveness through his pursuit of Dora, played by Nicoletta Braschi, so the comedy also tells us how he thinks. Braschi gives the romance a welcome calm beside his energy. We believe in the affection, though the film’s delight in Guido can leave Dora seeming chiefly there to appreciate him.
Tonino Delli Colli’s cinematography is at its most effective when anti-Semitic imagery intrudes on the early romance. We have been encouraged to enjoy Guido and Dora’s courtship, and these reminders of persecution make that enjoyment uneasy. Danilo Donati’s production design helps make their early scenes inviting, although the film’s prettiness becomes a problem when it approaches historical suffering. The settings give the jokes somewhere to work, but do too little to make the family seem vulnerable.
We were moved by Guido’s effort to turn danger into a game for his son, Giosué, played by Giorgio Cantarini. Keeping a child calm is an immediate, understandable task, and Benigni makes the effort feel desperate beneath the comedy. At these moments, the film needs no larger claim about the power of imagination. A parent trying to manage his own fear while taking responsibility for someone else’s gives us plenty to care about.
But the game also asks us to accept too much protection from what is happening around it. A child’s limited understanding cannot settle how gently a film should present the Holocaust to adults. Benigni and Cerami make Guido’s resourcefulness so central that the surrounding cruelty seems to matter chiefly as a test of his ingenuity. That leaves us worrying about the success of his invention when we ought to be more troubled by the danger that makes it necessary.
Simona Paggi’s editing keeps the romantic farce buoyant, but the film allows too little time outside Guido’s reassuring account of things. The shift between comedy and suffering needs more friction than it gets. Nicola Piovani’s music reinforces the tenderness when a less consoling accompaniment might let us experience something more difficult. We wanted less help feeling sad, particularly when Benigni’s effort to keep the game going was already enough to move us.
The licence usually granted to a family fable is harder to grant when its subject is the Holocaust. We do not need comedy excluded from such a story, but we do need the horror to remain beyond a charming man’s ability to explain it away. Benigni’s sincerity keeps the film from feeling cynical, even when the sentiment becomes too insistent. Consider it for the performances, with no obligation to accept the reassurance.
