Country: ItalyLanguage: Italian | German | English
Director: Roberto Benigni
This is a film that begins as if it were a comedy (and a good one at that!). Roberto Benigni is a very good artist. A brilliant director and as marvelous an actor. Guido (Benigni) is one of those men who are the personified form of humor, wit and optimism. And this man is not mythical; I have come across a few like him in real life.
All along one has to fight to hold back tears as the film plays particularly upon the emotions that are very intense even in daily life and in the backdrop of the ugliest chapter of the mankind’s history they disturb you even more. The tenderness and innocence of Joshua is one of the things that trigger such emotional intensity. And then, the extreme contrast of the Nazis: their stoic attitude and mercilessness is something that makes the script even more effective.
Nicoletta Braschi is extremely good as Dora and the child artist Giorgio Cantarini is the perfect choice for the role.
This film makes you rethink that you destroy a lot of things in one go but if you take an individual look at everything you destroy, you’ll realize how beautiful were the things you destroyed and maybe you try not to destroy them the next time.
The film surely makes you hate Nazis once again and reminds you the atrocities that were committed. That is something important as you need to remember the crimes committed in the history so that they are not repeated.
This movie mocks 'the great game' of war in one of the most humane portrayals ever to be shot. However much you say about this movie is not enough.
ReplyDeleteBenigni is a crackpot, as a person as well, and he understands that enough to create a character that suits him. He couldn't have played it differently, and nor could anyone different have played it.
It is almost like Bergnini the writer/director is taking the audience through war just as the father in the movie takes his son. We are the child who is looking at everything as if it is real, and when we are watching a movie it is always like a game that is made to look like reality, or maybe the other way around?
We want to be told that everything is alright, that good guys will win, that loved ones will reunite, and the father tries to do that. But unfortunately the writer tells a different story, and so we see the ending as very different from how the boy sees it.
We see life (in that time and place) and we see beauty (in the ending) and we are shown how we can finally connect the two, despite the apparent distance between the two. We are told to believe it is beautiful, for the boy sees the tank that means he's won the great game.