Life Is Beautiful

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Life Is Beautiful
original movie poster
Directed by	Roberto Benigni
Produced by	Gianluigi Braschi, John M. Davis, Elda Ferri
Written by	Roberto Benigni, Vincenzo Cerami
Starring	Roberto Benigni, Nicoletta Braschi, Giustino Durano
Distributed by	Miramax Films (USA)
Release date(s)	20 December 1997 23 October 1998 6 November 1998 26 December 1998 12 February 1999 5 March 1999
Running time	116 minutes
Language	Italian, German, English
IMDb profile

Life Is Beautiful (Italian: La vita è bella) is a 1997 Italian language film which tells the story of an Italian Jew, Guido Orefice (played by Roberto Benigni, who also directed the film), who lives in his own romantic fairy tale world, but must learn how to use his fertile imagination to help his son survive their internment in a Nazi concentration camp.

Contents 1 Title 2 Plot 3 Controversy 4 Awards 5 See also 6 External links

[edit] Title

The title derives from Leon Trotsky's last testament;^{[citation needed]} while in exile in Mexico, knowing he was soon to be assassinated by Stalin's agents, Trotsky saw his wife in the garden and wrote:

"Natasha has just come up to the window from the courtyard and opened it wider so that the air may enter more freely into my room. I can see the bright green strip of grass beneath the wall, and the clear blue sky above the wall, and sunlight everywhere. Life is beautiful. Let the future generations cleanse it of all evil, oppression and violence, and enjoy it to the full."

[edit] Plot

The first half of the movie is a whimsical, romantic comedy and often slapstick. Guido, a young Italian Jew, arrives in Arezzo where he sets up a bookstore. Guido is both funny and charismatic, especially when he romances Dora (Italian, but not Jewish), whom he steals – at her engagement – from her rude and loud fiancé. Several years pass, in which Guido and Dora have a son, Giosuè (written Joshua in the English subtitles).

In the second half of the movie, Guido, his uncle, and Giosuè are taken to a concentration camp on Giosuè's birthday. Not wanting to leave her family, Dora asks to be allowed to join them and is permitted to do so. In an attempt at keeping up Giosuè's spirits, Guido convinces him that the camp is just a game – a game in which the first person to get a thousand points wins a tank. He convinces Giosuè that the camp guards are mean because they want the tank for themselves, that all the other children are hiding in order to win the game, and puts off every attempt of Giosuè's ending the game and returning home by convincing him that they are in the lead for the tank. Despite being surrounded by rampant death and disease, Giosuè doesn't question this fiction both because of his father's convincing performance and his own innocence.

Guido maintains this story right until the end, when – in the chaos caused by the American advance drawing near – he tells his son to stay in a mailbox until everybody has left, this being the final test before the tank is his. After trying to warn Dora that the trucks go to the gas chambers, Guido is caught, taken away, and shot, but not after making his son laugh one last time. Giosuè manages to survive, and thinks he's won the game when an American tank arrives to liberate the camp, and is reunited with his mother.

The movie includes a scene of the operetta Les Contes d'Hoffmann (Tales of Hoffmann) with its melody "Barcarola".

[edit] Controversy

The decision to make a comedy set in a concentration camp was inevitably controversial. Benigni was publicly praised by Jewish groups for embracing and publicizing the Holocaust.^{[citation needed]} Others praised him for his daring and creative skill in successfully making a sensitive comedy about the tragedy,^{[citation needed]} an artistic challenge that even Charlie Chaplin admitted he would not have attempted with The Great Dictator had he known the full horrors committed in Nazi Germany.^{[citation needed]}

However, Benigni was criticized by some for trivializing the Holocaust as sort of a childish game (even though in the movie the "game" was invented to keep Giosuè from being too exposed to the horrors he is living through).^{[citation needed]} One of the principal critics is Israeli screenwriter Kobi Niv in his book Life is Beautiful, But Not for Jews (2003).

[edit] Awards

The movie made its worldwide release at the Cannes Film Festival in 1998, winning the Grand Prize of the Jury. It then went on to win Academy Awards for Best Music, Original Dramatic Score and Best Foreign Language Film. Benigni won Best Actor for his role. The film was additionally nominated for Academy Awards for Directing, Film Editing, Best Picture, and Best Original Screenplay, and is ranked 82nd on the Internet Movie Database's list of top 250 rated films as of November 2006. It also won the César Award for Best Foreign Film in 1999.

[edit] See also

• The Day the Clown Cried (1972), an unfinished film by Jerry Lewis
• Train de Vie by Radu Mihaileanu

[edit] External links

• Life Is Beautiful at the Internet Movie Database
• Life is Beautiful at the Arts & Faith Top100 Spiritually Significant Films list

Preceded by Character

Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film 1998

Succeeded by All About My Mother