Is life beautiful for Benigni?

>> Brave comedy off target

by JOANNE LATIMER

Is it offensive or not? That's the question surrounding Roberto Benigni's latest film, Life Is Beautiful. Offensive isn't a common adjective for Benigni's films. At worst, they're accused of excessive goofiness; he is, after all, Italy's answer to Charlie Chaplin. His daring new "fable" has accumulated eight Donatello Awards at home and countless international prizes. Benigni fans worldwide held their breath, waiting for the fallout from his comedy about the Holocaust.

None came. Oh, there was some careful and hushed criticism in film festival lobbies, but no widespread reprimand. Maybe that was because the film's press agents did such a good job of seeding the ground with information about how Benigni researched the film for two years, consulting Italian Holocaust survivors and historians. The message was clear: Benigni wasn't taking this film--or the Holocaust--lightly, so cut him some slack and enjoy the funny parts.

Slack is what he got from me--the first time I saw the film in May. But on second viewing, I was less distracted by Benigni's playful bravado and the sheer appeal of his comic invention. Life Is Beautiful is a funny film. But once the story moves into the concentration camp, it's much harder to take his fable at the level Benigni intends.

In keeping with Benigni's style, it begins as a small story. It's set in Tuscany in the late 1930s. Guido (Benigni) and his poet friend Ferruccio (Sergio Bustric) arrive in a Tuscan town, getting into trouble and looking for love. Anti-Semitism and Fascism loom in the background. Guido soon meets a schoolteacher named Dora (Nicoletta Braschi), who he takes to calling Princess. However, Dora's social-climbing mother has arranged Dora's engagement to a city official who supports the growing Fascist regime.

Benigni uses subtlety, satire and social commentary to criticize Nazism in the first half of the film. In a winning moment, he impersonates a school inspector sent around to lecture kids on race supremacy. However, when the film's setting changes to a work camp, things become less comfortable for the audience--who become hyper-aware that they're laughing at a film about the Holocaust. In order to shield his son from the horrifying realities of camp life, Guido concocts a lie: the whole ordeal is a game in which they are contestants. The winner gets a tank. It's a desperate idea that doesn't quite play out with the kind of tragi-comic grace aimed for by the director.

Life Is Beautiful opens Friday, October 30