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Ending of Italian film a surprising treat
ANNE BRADY
Associate Editor
Can a gripping, yet touching ending save a hopelessly implausible, goofball film? Apparently it can at the Cannes Film Festival and the David di Donatello (Italian Oscar) awards, where "La Vita E Bella" ("Life is Beautiful") was a big winner.
This comedy/drama/love story is about a man named Guido, portrayed by Italian comedian Roberto Benigni, who comes to the Tuscan town of Arrezzo with his poet friend Ferruccio (played by Sergio Bustric) and falls in love with Dora (Nicoletta Bra-schi).
Benigni, who also directed the film, has been compared to Jerry Lewis. Actually, he is a better actor. He combines the zaniness and pratfall behavior of Lewis with a bittersweet, Jay Thomas-style wry humor. In the early scenes, his Guido character is quite charming and likable, but his rambling speeches and stumbling antics become annoying and tiresome with time, and begin to grate on the nerves.
Guido, a Jewish waiter and bookstore-owner-wannabe, is pursuing Dora, a schoolteacher and the fiancee of a wealthy bureaucrat, in 1939. He poses as a school official on the lecture circuit to get into Dora's school, only to learn he is to give a speech on the theme, "Our Race is Superior." Since he has already chosen to ignore and dismiss anti-Semitism and fascism as irrelevant and unimportant, he has no trouble launching into a speech about how he is the perfect example of Aryan supremacy.
Guido wins Dora's heart and, at her request, takes her away from her fianc‚ and friends at a gala (by riding in and picking her up on his uncle's horse, which anti-Semites have painted green and adorned with the words "Jewish horse").
In the very next scene, Guido and Dora are married, with a child of about 4 or 5 named Giouse (Italian for Joshua, portrayed by Giorgio Cantarini) and a bookstore under their belts.
Nazis are marching in the streets by now, but whenever Giouse asks his father about anti-Semitic behavior or "no Jews allowed" signs, his father makes light of everything. He makes excuses and makes up lies to explain what is happening - even when he and his son are finally trucked off to a concentration camp.
When the film moves to Guido and his family's lives at the concentration camp, any attempts at humor fall totally flat, with scenes reminiscent of the "Hogan's Heroes" television show - with stupid Nazis being duped, and Guido getting away with incredible stunts. There quite simply is nothing funny about concentration camps and Nazis, gas chambers disguised as showers, and piles of dead bodies.
To Benigni's credit, the film, for the most part, stops trying to be funny at some point; Guido's jokes, lies and denials become tragic, rather than humorous; the depth of the character's love for his wife and son becomes remarkably clear, practically leaps off the screen. The shift, however, is jarring and incomplete.
Until the end - until that wonderful ending that almost single-handedly instills the film with meaning, infuses it with purpose. Throughout the film, it seems impossible that the film can end in any way that redeems Guido and feels right, but it does.
There also are some wonderful subplots, most notably the one about a restaurant customer of Guido's who loves riddles and stays up at night trying to solve them. Conspicuously absent is any sense of what being Jewish means to Guido, how Guido and Dora deal with intermarriage, or what faith/traditions young Giouse is being brought up with.
This film will almost certainly offend some people. But those who are willing to sit through the parts that appear to trivialize tragic history, may be in for a surprising treat when the film winds to a close - a compelling ending that forces the viewer to rethink all previous impressions and examine the entire film through another lens.
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