La vita e' bella

Plot:
The film starts in the 1930s when Guido relocates from the country to a large Tuscan town where he falls in love with schoolteacher Dora. She is already engaged to another guy, but Guido stills fights for her. The story continues 5 years later, during wartime, Guido is married to Dora and they have a son called Giosue. Guido is of Jewish origin, and he is sent to a concentration camp with Giosue and Dora follows them, only to be sent to another camp. - Anonymous

Comment:
After having read the enthusiastic critics about this movie, I decided that it would have been stupid for me not to see it just because I never appreciated any previous movie of Roberto Benigni and because I usually don't see any italian movie. And so, once again, after last year's wonderful Nirvana, I managed to see a quality italian movie!

Just like almost any other movie with Benigni, the story is about a silly man that manages to entertain the audience with his jokes, his amusing inventions and his catching personality. The difference is that the movie is set at the beginning of the second world war and since the main character is Jew, he is deportated in a german concentration camp. Here, he tries to fool his young son and let him think that the camp is just a game, that he must be hidden (all the other children of the camp were killed) to gain more points and win a real tank.

Unfortunately, the movie starts as a very light comedy where Benigni shows all his tipical comical qualities (for people who likes him!) and this is obviously the weakest part. However, there are many incredibly funny scenes and this can be seen as a sort of introduction to the characters or as a slow warm up (there are various references to Jews and fascism which clearly hints about how the story will proceed).

The story has a time gap of many years, hence the deportation happens suddenly and the setting changes from the small italian village to the concentration camp. From that point, the movie still maintains a high level of entertainment but this only barely covers the dramaticity of the events. While it may look cynical to make fun of the holocaust, I think that Benigni manages to do this in an admirable way, the subject is difficult and it is easy to sink down into bad taste, but this fortunately never happens.

Through a very well organised mix of amusing and dramatic scenes, the movie reaches a partially unexpected finale where fun, happiness and sadness are combined in a series of touching moments. The triumph of the movie is beautifully summarised by the very last scene where the young boy shouts: "Abbiamo vinto!" (We have won!).