Film Review: Life is Beautiful

A STRING of awards, including three Academy Awards for Best Foreign Film, Best Dramatic Score and the Best Actor for Roberto Benigni, acclaim the world over, encomiums from every section - after all these, ``Life is Beautiful'', now comes to Chennai, to intrigue the audience with comedy, tragedy, verve, sobriety and several such paradoxes.

We have seen comedy in many of its manifestations - the physical kind, the cinematic and the downright slapstick. But ``Life is Beautiful'' is a touching blend of sadness, affection, and humour, interwoven beautifully to mesmerise and leave an indelible impact.

The year is 1939 - a time when Italy was in the sordid grip of Fascism and anti-Semitism. A horrific part in human history when Italian Jews of all ages were pulled out of their homes and deported to live in inhuman conditions and die so...in concentration camps. With such gruesomeness as the backdrop, a wonderful love story unfolds, a happy family comprising the couple and their son is projected, till of course they are forcibly separated.

Suddenly, Guido (Roberto Benigni, who has written the screenplay and also directed the film), finds himself and his young son Joshua (an excellent essay by the tiny tot), deported to a concentration camp. But he cannot in any way allow Joshua to have even an inkling of their fate. His wife Dora (Nicholetta Braschi) is kept with other women. It is a life of torture for all the Jews there. Joshua is made to believe that it is all a game, at the end of which the winner will be presented with a real army tank. He is excited - hides whenever his father asks him to, keeps mute when instructed and follows the ``rules of the game'' implicitly. At the end of it all, when Joshua stands alone in the camp a ``real tank'' does come (to save him) and the child joyously blurts out ``It's true...''. The scene is serendipity at its saddest. Without neither gore nor goo, the film makes audience's hearts heavy.

``Life is Beautiful'' (La Vita E Bella) is a beautiful tale of laughter that is utterly moving too.

MALATHI RANGARAJAN

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Section  : Entertainment
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