Is life more beautiful beyond the adult, absurd world?
Content warning: mentions of Anti-Semitism and death. May also contain spoilers (scene descriptions and foreshadowing)
Image credit: Anja Gogo (via RedBubble Movie Painted Poster)
Like the dedicated good cinephile I am, it’s my moral imperative to pay my own tribute to La vita è bella. This 1997 pellicola obtained la bellezza of 7 nominations, 3 of which awarding Benigni as actor, screenwriter and director of the tragicomic masterpiece. Sophia Loren’s “ROBERTOOO!”still echoes in the history of Italian cinema , where one of her compatriots’ victory at the Oscars couldn’t have been announced any differently, with any less exuberance.
With Arezzo as the stage binding the movie to Benigni’s Tuscan comic heritage, we’re faced with a fairytale-like beginning. Guido Orefice (Benigni), a Jewish-Italian waiter, marries Dora (Nicoletta Braschi) and has a son, Giosué. However, because we’re on the threshold of a new dark era (the German occupation in Italy), this carefree happiness is abruptly disrupted. Guido and Giosué are sent to a concentration camp and, even when Dora insists she be taken too, they’re not reunited as she’s housed in the women's side. Sheltering Giosué becomes Guido’s primary goal, so he convinces his son that the time spent there is merely a point-collecting game, where 1000 guarantee victory: a real-life tank.
A display of comic and Italian traditions
The film is crowded with references, including allusions to the Commedia dell’arte and its clowning traditions of trickery (la beffa/la burla). This elaborated bricolage of functional intertextuality covers Chaplin’s film comedy, Schopenauer “Word as Will” philosophy, l’arguzia of Dr Lessing riddles, as well as Wittgensteinian language games reminders in the translation scene, where language is symbolically a form of privilege, power, a medium that builds an alternative reality. Here, the appalling German rules seem to be valid only to those in the lager unaware of the competition “per il carro armato in carne ed ossa” (for the real-life tank). They can’t coexist with the fantasy that Guido created, where those appalling messages could have only been translated as game instructions. And it is extremely shocking when the game starts to work on a literal level, in ambivalence with the surrounding reality.
It is worth also noting the appeal to iconic tradition of adopting father-son dyads as perspective’s lenses, which characterises Italian narratives (other examples include Bertolucci’s Strategia del ragno (1970) and Vittorio De Sica’s Ladri di biciclette (1948)). A dyad that, in La vita è bella, almost aims to bridge a generational gap between Guido and Giosué, when faced with the common adversity of the Holocaust.
Symbols and foreshadowing themes in the movie
Image credit: Anja Gogo (illustration)
One of the pieces that stands out from the pellicola’s soundtrack has to be Barcarolle. The piece belongs to Offenbach’s opera “The Tales of Hoffmann”, where the text is descriptive mainly of love’s beauty. In the movie, Barcarolle is almost a cinematic tool that Benigni uses to demark the materialisation of his love with Dora, as well as the end of their doomed fable-like story together.
At first, we’re presented with a performance of Barcarolle at the opera. Dora is sat in a balcony, with the upper class, gazing at the stage. Guido is sat below, with perhaps more common spectators, but he’s the only one not looking forward. His eyes are locked by the vision of Dora, è più forte di lui (he can’t help it)! He tries to practise Schopenhauer’s theory of the World as Will, whispering “Guardami Principessa, Guardami!” (Look at me Princess, look at me!) and “Voltati!” (Turn around!) incessantly, until she finally reciprocates his eyes. This, of course, through his stubborn gesticolare, echoing the typical Italian habit of communicating non-verbally, when wishing to deliver a message in its most explicit way (in this case, love). In a later scene, where the couple is now divided in the lager, we see them almost in reversed positions as opposed to the ones they held at the opera.
· Guido is with the upper-class as a provisional server, in an upstairs dining area.
· Dora is with the other women prisoners, sleeping in the room
Here, Guido plays Barcarolle through the concentration camp on a record player, in a flicker moment of freedom. Dora hears it and opens the window: in the middle of that unspeakable tragedy Guido has been able to find a way to let her know that he’s alive and he loves her. Despite the distance, they both know they’re looking at each other, without any eye contact confirming it. And they’re both unaware that this moment marks the end of their fable life together, as they know it.
Another symbolic moment is the scene where Guido and Giosué noticed the anti-Semitic sign "Dogs and Jews are not allowed”. Faced with the tragic nature of reality, Guido decides to create a ban for "spiders and Visigoths" with his son, distracting him from that message of hate. This reinforces the protective function of the fantasy, leaving us with bittersweetness and worried anticipation for the second half of the film. An ulterior example would be Giosué hiding in a cupboard to avoid a bath, foreshadowing the parallel later when his hiding will gift him the much-needed escape.
Timing in the movie
What I never forget about this movie is Guido’s ingenious capacity to shape his surroundings, in order to maintain the fable frame of his story. It’s almost uncanny how he can create coincidences instead of being subject to them, fitting circumstances in a seemingly perfect tetris. However, when comparing the first half of the movie narrative to the darker second chapter, witnessing how the nature of timing evolves is almost painful. In Arezzo, Guido would always charm Dora with his "Buongiorno, Principessa!"(Good morning Princess!), remaining loyal to the fable structure, getting the timing perfect every time. However, when his optimism seemed to shield him and the Orefice family from the surrounding tragedy, we observe its failure in the concentration camp. Guido, despite being responsible for building the game fantasy with a real tank as final prize, doesn’t manage to convince his son entirely. In fact, Giosué is the one who maintains a pessimistic attitude and ironically has a better future than Guido’s, where his optimism didn’t allow him the same fate.
The failure of universalising a positive principle:
la piaga del falso storico
Just like Guido’s optimism didn’t guarantee him a fairy-tale ending, similarly Benigni’s movie wasn’t always acclaimed with the desired response. It has been criticised that the desperate attempt to maintain a Hollywood like happiness, often symbolised by “la promessa del carro armato” (the promise of the real life-tank), is just an expedient to evade complexity. Benigni’s pellicola is guilty of historical inaccuracy, but what causes a stir is the presupposed aim of pleasing the Americans, with the Oscar as ultimate goal. The ending is the context of the controversy, where the Jews in the lager are freed from the Americans and not the Russians, clearly altering the political truth of the events.
However, it is perhaps to some extent cynical inferring that this choice had an instrumental, commercial purpose. Benigni, despite apologising for any offence caused, reminds us that this isn’t a movie about Auschwitz. Rather, the context of the lager is simply "the" concentration camp, as any camp contains that horror. It might be worth considering that this cinematographic fable goes beyond formal correctness. It is obviously inspired by historical events, but it is ultimately a form of art, where comedy is a powerful tool that is consciously used in a deceptive way. It is a doomed strategy to forget, attempting the achievement of temporary survival.
The pellicola is essentially fighting the identity of the Holocaust as the unspeakable evil (as Zizek observed) by using laughter and fantasy as ambitious ways of coping with its invading spectral presence. "Life is beautiful" and its comedy are successful when forcing us to open our eyes to our ridiculous, vulnerable, human nature. The tragedy of anti-Semitism cannot be hidden, but hiding racial wickedness implicitly awakens our incredulity with greater emphasis, also when presented with Giosué's final words: "This is his gift to me".
Image credit: Marco Serpieri - for Tito Momi (illustration)
"There is no bigger tragedy than to remember the happy times during the misery"
Benigni really did write one of the most unforgettable pages/chapters of Italian cinema: his movie is even in Pope John Paul II’s top 5 all-time favourites! (For those of you who eagerly read this article chasing fun facts). E perchè non dovrebbe?
Personally, I struggle to empathise with reviews that condemn the film as a “benign form of Holocaust denial” (David Denby, 1999), drawing on historical implausibility and Guido’s hamartia-like, Eden fantasy. This refers to his belief that he can control the worlds around him as he pleases, through a kaleidoscope of role plays and games. Guido’s continuous slippage between reality and fantasy might tread on delicate ground, but what is worth noting is that this movie isn’t a work of realism and that’s because Benigni is not interested in that. Documentaries, as he claimed before in various interviews, are probably the only media owning the capacity to deliver people truths. La vita è bella, however, is more than just a movie about the Holocaust: it conveys man's desire to cling on to life’s beauty, the power of love, even when there seems to be none. And because this transcendental truth is universal, the movie’s astonishing international success isn’t surprising, but rather guaranteed.
