The Tiger and the Snow
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| La tigre et la neve | |
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| Directed by | Roberto Benigni |
| Written by | Roberto Benigni & Vincenzo Cerami |
| Starring | Roberto Benigni: Attilio de Giovanni Jean Reno: Fuad Nicoletta Braschi: Vittoria Emilia Fox: Nancy Giuseppe Battiston: Ermanno Tom Waits: himself Andrea Renzi: Doctor Guazzelli Gianfranco Varetto: attorney Scuotilancia Chiara Pirri: Emilia Anna Pirri: Rosa |
| Release date(s) | 2005 |
| Running time | 118 min. |
| Country | Italy |
| Language | Italian |
| IMDb profile | |
La tigre e la neve (English: The Tiger and the Snow) is a 2005 Italian movie starring and directed by Roberto Benigni.
The film is a romantic comedy set in contemporary Rome and in occupied Baghdad during the Iraq War. The story is told as a double-faced dream with a surprise ending, inspired by the tale of "Sleeping Beauty". The memorable initial scene moves the audience as a celebration of love, man's greatest strength, with an abundance of poetic references mentioned in the closing credits.
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[edit] Plot
Rome, March 2003. Attilio de Giovanni (Roberto Benigni), a comical but talented literature professor and the divorced father of two teenage girls, is hopelessly in love with Vittoria (Nicoletta Braschi, Benigni's wife in real life), a writer who is the subject of a recurring dream, featuring a surreal wedding ceremony with poetry verses in the background. Attilio's strenuous courtship is unsuccessful, yet he does not lose hope, despite the fact that Vittoria obviously does not share the same feelings.
Vittoria leaves to go to Iraq to write the biography of the poet Fuad (Jean Reno), a close friend of Attilio who is returning to his country after 18 years in exile in France. Vittoria is wounded during the Iraq War and Attilio manages to reach Baghdad with the intention of saving her life. He finds Vittoria in an Iraqi hospital lying in a coma; like thousands of Iraqis, she is in danger of dying from lack of medicine. Fuad directs Attilio to an old Iraqi pharmacist, who suggests ancient treatments that keep her alive. Attilio then runs the risk of going to the Italian Red Cross HQ in Iraq, obtains medical supplies by posing as a doctor, then brings medicines back to Baghdad. The medical supplies enable Vittoria to make a complete recovery, but when Attilio goes to Fuad's house to tell him about this triumph over adversity, he finds that Fuad has hanged himself. Fuad had earlier had a short soliloquy on how "his eyes no longer...", but Attilio had not picked up on because he was frantically trying to make the glycerine mixture to save Vittoria. Just before Vittoria emerges from her coma, Attilio is captured by the U.S. Military and is mistaken for an Iraqi insurgent.
In the final scenes it is revealed that Vittoria is Attilio's wife. They are obviously separated in this story, perhaps because of his tumultuous over-abundant energy and insane diversions, (along with earlier transgressions with another woman). Several times we see Attilio in awkward visits to Vittoria and their children, and obviously he is still hopelessly in love. (He proves this in the most extreme way- finding her and somehow managing to save her life in war-torn Iraq.) In the final scene of the film, even though Attilio won't admit that he is the "wonderful stranger who saved her", Vittoria suddenly recognizes his familiar way of brushing her cheek in the same manner that "the stranger" had touched her when she was lying unconscious in the hospital, and the way her necklace dangling from his neck touches her face.
[edit] Connections to La Vita è bella
Several references to Life Is Beautiful are scattered throughout the film. First and foremost is the Benigni-Braschi pairing (real life husband and wife). The first half of the film deals with Benigni's character courting Braschi's, and the second part has them separated by a war. Benigni is even taken prisoner at one point. Benigni's attempts at saving his wife are remiscient of his scenes cheering up his son at the concentration camp. Benigni's movie Pinocchio is also alluded to, particularly Braschi's character, the Blue Fairy: at one point her husband asks her to wear a blue robe. Later on her husband straps a blue scuba mask to her eyes, remarking how beautiful the color blue contrasts her skin.
[edit] Trivia
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- The dream scenes feature Tom Waits (who had starred with Benigni in the movie Down by Law) singing his composition, the heart-breaking ballad You Can Never Hold Back Spring and accompanying himself at the piano.
- The Iraqi scenes were shot in Tunisia.
- The name of the protagonist is a reference to the Italian poet Attilio Bertolucci.
- The dream scenes depict, thanks to computer graphics, a number of poets: Eugenio Montale, Jorge Luis Borges, Marguerite Yourcenar, and Giuseppe Ungaretti.
- Near the end of the film, a number of circus animals wander through the streets of a Rome residential neighborhood. One of these animals is a splendid tiger which momentarily blocks the street on which Vittoria is driving. It is late spring and the cottonwood trees are shedding, which resembles snow. This is a reference to an earlier line of dialogue in which Vittoria says she would not be with Attilio unless she saw a tiger in the snow; thus the title of the film.
[edit] External links
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