“There is no big­ger tragedy than to remem­ber the happy times dur­ing the mis­ery.” — Unknown quote.

Life is beau­ti­ful — for whom ?

Life doesn’t become beau­ti­ful for all. In fact, for those, who met with a tragedy, it becomes one. You might have come across the hor­ror movie series SAW.. the ser­ial killer is a 70+ years old can­cer patient and sees the other peo­ple, how they waste their valu­able life.. Also, he kills them for their unim­por­tance about life :). A small tragedy opens up the door.

Every direc­tor has their dream to direct a movie based on God Father in their own vari­a­tion [ Naya­gan, Devar magan, Sarkar ] Sim­i­larly on holo­caust, every­one has tried their own ver­sion and Roberto Benigni over­takes oth­ers by mix­ing the right flavours of emotions.

Life is Beau­ti­ful [ 1997 / Ital­ian / Comedy-tragedy-war ]
Cast : Roberto Benigni, Nico­letta Braschi, Gior­gio Can­tarini
Co-written, pro­duced and Directed by : Roberto Benigni

Plot

The film begins with this dia­log in the voice-over. “This is a sim­ple story but dif­fi­cult one to tell. Like a fable, there is sor­row, and like a fable, it is full of won­der and hap­pi­ness.” — It’s a fable which one can’t for­get easily !

Before the World War II in Italy, Guido [ Roberto Benigni ] and his friend travel to the city to find job.Also, they plan to open a book­store. Mean­while, he works as a waiter and he comes across a school teacher named Dora [ Nico­letta Braschi ]. Guido’s funny behav­iour and charm even­tu­ally make Dora to fall in love with him. They marry and lead a peace­ful life. Later, they have a son named Joshua [Gior­gio Can­tarini]. 5 Years passes by. Till this point, the movie is just a funny flick.

The big game starts. Since Guido is Jew­ish, and he and his son are forced to set­tle in a con­cen­tra­tion camp; Dora, though she is not Jew­ish, refuses to sep­a­rate and is sent with them. Try­ing to pro­tect his son from the hor­rors oth­ers are under­go­ing, Guido cre­ates a fic­tion for them to live inside: they’re play­ing a game, a con­test, and they must play it to the hilt in order to win the first prize: a real, live army tank. A tough time for a father to hide out the tragic attrib­utes of a camp and inter­pret­ing the entire setup as a game to his son. He makes his son to believe too.

What hap­pens then ? You know for sure that it’s not a feel good story.

View

- The film sym­bol­ises a jour­ney and through out the jour­ney, Guido is able to sus­tain his faith in human­ity and a hard desire to sur­vive in life.

- At no point, the holocaust’s hor­ror is cheap­ened by the humour of Guido. The sense of hor­ror is actu­ally inten­si­fied as the audi­ence is left with a joke and they can’t laugh for it.

- Benigni’s father spent 2 years in Ger­man con­cen­tra­tion camp. He shared his expe­ri­ences to his fam­ily mem­bers in a com­i­cal way so that the kids are not fright­ened. That’s the knot and essence of the movie.

- Benigni was ini­tially a stand-up come­dian in his ini­tial stages of his career. [ like Woody Allen ].

- The film starts in a lighter way with some slap­stick moments.[ break less car, girl falling from her house, dash­ing on some­one ]. The direc­tor clev­erly pre­pares the audi­ence for a dan­ger­ous ride in the later part of the movie. [ Sethu fol­lows this technique ! ]

- Benigni’s orig­i­nal wife played as his wife in this movie. [ May be because of the con­cen­tra­tion camp :) ]

- One of the touch­ing scenes is that a per­son who is sup­posed to help Guido talks about some­thing else, when asked for help, in the hotel.

- Guido mocks the soldier’s walk — at first we smile on it.. but dur­ing the sec­ond time we can’t. the wink they make at each other stumps the viewers.

- Here Guido’s life and his uncon­di­tional love is shown with respect to holo­caust and not in the reverse. It’s about to what extent can a per­son go to save his beloved ones in cri­sis times.

- Though it’s a drama to keep a kid in the con­cen­tra­tion camp, the impact it makes is tremendous.

–Life is Beau­ti­ful does not detail on the hor­rors of the camp, nor it ignores them. The sec­ond half of the movie is more emo­tional and empha­sise love and the power of desire to sur­vival at the best.

- I need to appre­ci­ate Benigni for cast­ing him­self for the Guido char­ac­ter — it’s tai­lor made. He chose what comes to him, best [ Like MGR.. MGR never chose a char­ac­ter which doesn’t fit him — a retired offi­cer ! ] Also, selec­tion of the boy char­ac­ter is a fan­tas­tic move. His inno­cence can never be forgotten.

Con­clu­sion

Com­edy is used to empha­sise the tragedy and the direc­tor Benigni wins. He crosses the thin line of mak­ing con­cen­tra­tion camp as a funny place.

A father of a girl child can’t digest ‘Mahanadhi’. Sim­i­larly, a boy’s father can’t digest “Life is Beau­ti­ful” [ Of course, a father is a father ! ]. Great films n sto­ries deal with uncon­di­tional love [ Hotel Rwanda, Kiku­jiro, Anbe sivam — Mother supe­rior, The way home, Schindler’s list ] and this film does the same.

அன்பின் பாதை சேர்ந்த‌வ‌னுக்கு
முடிவே இல்லைய‌டா
ம‌ன‌தின் நீள‌ம் எதுவோ அதுவே
வாழ்வின் நீள‌ம‌டா !

Life is Beau­ti­ful won 3 acad­emy awards [ best for­eign film, Best actor, Best orig­i­nal score ]. The other for­eign movies nom­i­nated were Chil­dren of heaven [ kaaviyam ! ] and Cen­tral sta­tion [ Brazil­ian ver­sion of Kiku­jiro ].

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