But all will be lost if Giosue is discovered by the mean loud guys or gals. To protect the saucer-eyed tyke from the truth, he convinces the boy that they've enrolled in a vastly complicated game and must accrue a thousand points to win first prize: an actual army tank. When they arrive, the children are separated from their parents, but Guido manages to hide Giosue in the men's barracks.
When the story resumes several years in the future, it's too late to escape, and without warning Guido, wife Dora and son Giosue (Giorgio Cantarini) are crowded onto a train bound for a Nazi concentration camp. Guido, an assimilated Italian Jew, shares that trait with the Jewish aristocrats in Vittorio De Sica's "Garden of the Finzi-Continis." He ignores the mounting antisemitism and goes about business as usual.īlissful ignorance works well enough in the first half of the film, which depicts Guido's humorous pursuit of a schoolteacher, Dora (Nicoletta Braschi, who is also Benigni's real-life wife). And for much of the time, they serve him as well here as they did in larks like "Johnny Stecchino."īenigni, who also co-wrote and directed the film, plays lovable, zany Guido, a cockeyed optimist who always sees the silver lining but never the cloud brooding on the horizon. Renowned in Europe for his madcap comedies, Benigni enters unknown territory with this darker work but he uses familiar tools: outlandish stunts, elaborate gags, an infectious spirit and agile body and the nervous energy of a Starbucks junkie. "It is a simple story, but not an easy one to tell," as the narrator so rightly observes. Roberto Benigni puts his comic ingenuity to the ultimate test in "Life Is Beautiful," a Chaplinesque fable that begins in the sunny fields of Tuscany and ends in the shadows of a mythical concentration camp somewhere in Italy.
Roberto Benigni co-wrote, directed and stars in "Life is Beautiful." (Miramax)Ĭhildren under 13 should be accompanied by a parent