Life Is Beautiful

Life Is Beautiful (Italian: La vita è bella) is a 1997 Italian language film which tells the story of aJewish Italian, Guido Orefice (played by Roberto Benigni, who also directed and co-wrote the film), who must employ his fertile imagination to help his family during their internment in a Nazi concentration camp.

At the 71st Academy Awards in 1998, Benigni won the Academy Award for Best Actor and the film won both the Academy Award for Best Original Dramatic Score and the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film.

Plot

The first half of the movie is a whimsical, romantic, slapstick comedy set in the years beforeWorld War II. Guido Orefice (Roberto Benigni), a young Italian Jew, arrives in Arezzo where he plans to set up a bookstore, taking a job in the interim as a waiter at his uncle's hotel.

Guido is both funny and charismatic, especially when he romances a local school teacher, Dora, saying she is beautiful like the morning sun rise (portrayed by Benigni's actual wifeNicoletta Braschi). Dora, however comes from a wealthy, aristocratic, non-Jewish Italian family. Dora's mother wants her to marry a well-to-do civil servant, but Dora falls instead for Guido where he ends up stealing her away at her engagement party from her aristocratic but arrogant fiancé.

Several years pass in which Guido and Dora marry and have a son, Giosuѐ (Joshua) (Giorgio Cantarini).

Dora and her mother (Marisa Paredes) are estranged due to the unequal marriage. Later on, a reconciliation takes place just prior to Giosuѐ's fourth birthday.

In the second half of the film, The Second World War has already begun. Guido, Uncle Eliseo, and Giosuѐ are forced onto a train and taken to a concentration camp on Giosuѐ's birthday. Dora demands to be on the same train to join her family and is permitted to do so.

In the camp, Guido hides his son from the Nazi guards, sneaks him food, and tries to humor him. In an attempt to keep up Giosuѐ's spirits, Guido convinces him that the camp is just a game, in which the first person to get 1,000 points wins a tank. He tells him that if he cries, complains that he wants his mother, or says that he is hungry, he will lose points, while quiet boys who hide from the camp guards earn 1,000 points.

Guido convinces Giosuѐ that the camp guards are mean because they want the tank for themselves and that all the other children are hiding in order to win the game. He puts off Giosuѐ's requests to end the game and return home by convincing him that they are in the lead for the tank. Despite being surrounded by rampant misery, sickness, and death, Giosuѐ does not question this fiction because of his father's convincing performance and his own innocence.

Guido maintains this story right until the end, when—in the chaos caused by the American advance—he tells his son to stay in a sweatboxuntil everybody has left, this being the final test before the tank is his. After trying to find Dora, Guido is caught, taken away and shot dead by a Nazi guard, but not before making his son laugh one last time by imitating the Nazi guard as if the two of them are marching around the camp together.

Giosuѐ manages to survive and thinks he has won the game when an American tank arrives to liberate the camp. He is reunited with his mother, not knowing that his father has died. Years later, he realizes the sacrifice his father made for him, and that it was because of that sacrifice that he is still alive today. In the film, Giosuѐ is around four and a half years old; however, both the beginning and ending of the film are narrated by an older Giosuѐ recalling his father's story and sacrifice for his family.

[edit]Awards

Life is Beautiful was shown at the 1998 Cannes Film Festival, and went on to win the Grand Prize of the Jury.^[1] At the 71st Academy Awards, the film won awards for Best Music, Original Dramatic Score, and Best Foreign Language Film, with Benigni winning Best Actor for his role. The film also received Academy Award nominations for Directing, Film Editing, Best Original Screenplay, and Best Picture.^[2]

[edit]Reception

Life is Beautiful became commercially successful. Being released on October 23, 1998, the film went on to gross $57.24 million in North America, and $171.60 million internationally, with a worldwide gross of $229,163,264.^[3]

The film also received mostly positive reviews, with the movie aggregator website, Rotten Tomatoes giving the film a "Fresh" 79% rating.^[4]Rick Groen from the Globe and Mail gave the film a lukewarm review, stating, "Yes, there are heaps of charm and poignancy in this trifle, but it's a trifle nonetheless -- light-and-bright, for sure, but also slight-and-trite."^[4] Kenneth Turan from the Los Angeles Times also gave the film a positive review, remarking, "Its sentiment is inescapable, but genuine poignancy and pathos are also present, and an overarching sincerity is visible too.

Posted in: Top Movies Wiki