La vita è bella (1997)
Life Is Beautiful
Hayat Güzeldir
Almost anyone who follows cinema closely will be familiar with films about the Holocaust. It is a fact that Jewish lobbying groups are very powerful and influential in the film industry, particularly in Hollywood. Life Is Beautiful is also set during the Holocaust, but it takes a very different approach from similar films. Schindler’s List, Inglourious Basterds and The Pianist are the first films about this period that come to my mind. In almost all of them, you encounter intense dramatisation, plenty of scenes involving blood and death, and historical recollections intended to shock the viewer.
Life Is Beautiful is a wonderful film that brought Roberto Benigni, whom we see as both the lead actor and director, worldwide recognition. I think it deserves to be called a cult classic. It follows a father’s experiences during the Second World War: his capture by the Nazis with his son, their transportation to a labour camp, and his attempts to protect his little boy from the pain and fear of the truth among people facing death. Unable to explain the reality around them to his child, he turns it into an imaginary competition and dresses it up with lies.
There are no scenes of death and violence shoved in the viewer’s face. Yet the father’s almost superhuman effort to shield his son and keep their situation from him sometimes makes you feel the tragedy more deeply than anything else could.
The storytelling in Life Is Beautiful has a remarkable sense of harmony that completely swept me away. With the screenplay unfolding through the child’s eyes, the gulf between the reality the adults are living through and what the child is told never feels jarring. You can’t help admiring the director for that.
Historical films set during the Second World War may not interest you. You may even be tired of films about the Holocaust. But you should set all those labels aside for this one, watch it and keep it in your collection.
In the video below, you can watch one of the film’s unforgettable moments—the arrival at the camp and the explanation of its rules—with Turkish subtitles.