Roberto Benigni’s romance is funny, and his anxious father can be deeply moving. But Life Is Beautiful softens its Holocaust setting too much to make its reassurance convincing.
Roberto Benigni sets Life Is Beautiful a difficult task: to make a father’s comic imagination matter in a story about the Holocaust. The result is funny and affecting in places, but its determination to reassure us becomes a serious weakness. Benigni wants us to understand why a parent might keep performing when there is no longer anything to laugh about. We believe in that impulse, though the film gives us too little reason to question what it can accomplish.
The courtship gives Benigni’s Guido ample opportunity to be ridiculous, and he takes it. His physical comedy makes romantic persistence seem like strenuous work, with Dora, played by Nicoletta Braschi, providing the reason he will not stop. We laughed at the extravagance of his attempts to win her over, because Benigni throws himself into each invention with so little apparent embarrassment. This is the stretch in which the film’s confidence feels justified, and its affection for Guido is easiest to share.
The screenplay, by Benigni and Vincenzo Cerami, asks the same ingenuity to sustain much harsher material. There is a clear connection between the lover who invents ways to woo Dora and the father who tries to protect Giosué. The writing does not make that connection sufficient to hold the film together. It keeps returning to Guido’s resourcefulness when we need a stronger sense of what lies beyond his control, and the repeated encouragement to admire him becomes wearing.
Tonino Delli Colli’s cinematography contributes to the difficulty by making horror too pleasing to contemplate. The images encourage us to appreciate their arrangement when we ought to be troubled by what they contain. Danilo Donati’s production design is more convincing during the courtship, where surroundings that feel arranged for Guido’s inventions suit the comedy. Beyond the romance, that continued sense of accommodation makes the danger harder to believe.
Benigni’s performance is more persuasive when the effort begins to show. We were moved by Guido’s determination to keep his son from recognising his fear; the strain of continuing to be funny gives the clowning a purpose we can understand. Giorgio Cantarini plays Giosué, and the father’s need to protect this particular child gives the story something immediate to care about. These moments are strong enough to explain the affection the film inspires, even when its larger choices remain hard to accept.
Simona Paggi’s editing leaves the two parts awkwardly joined, and some of the comedy lingers after its initial pleasure has faded. The pacing gives us time to notice how much work Benigni is doing to keep everything connected. Nicola Piovani’s music encourages tenderness, which is welcome during the romance and less helpful when the film needs to give us room for discomfort. Its emotional prompting becomes another reason to feel that our response is being decided for us.
A comic fable can ask us to accept coincidences and an improbably resourceful hero. With the Holocaust as its subject, it also has to persuade us that suffering has not been made easier to digest for our benefit. Benigni’s sincerity cannot quite settle that concern, however much his performance earns our sympathy. See it for Benigni, provided you are willing to leave with more doubts than the film seems to anticipate.
