Life Is Beautiful (1997)
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Life Is Beautiful Movie Review
Life Is Beautiful is a 1997 Italian comedy drama film directed by and starring Roberto Benigni. It’s a solid, but extremely overrated movie.
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“If you speak my name, I vanish.
What am I? Silence“
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It follows a Jewish Italian bookshop owner who employs his fertile imagination to shield his son from the horrors of internment in a Nazi concentration camp. If there ever was a foreign movie made for mass audiences to enjoy, this is the one. There are some good things that can come from such a project as it really made many people happy and emotional, but for me personally this was too populist to enjoy more.
The movie is basically two films rolled into one. The first one’s a comedy with romantic elements and it was charming enough and inconsequential for sure, but the second one suddenly becomes a World War II drama with strong comedic elements, but also an overwhelming emotional side to it with that third act being sweet and beautiful, yes, but also very emotionally manipulative.
Let’s talk about Roberto Benigni and this is where you either hate or love this movie. I personally fall in the middle. On the one hand, he can be endearing and charming in some scenes. And he admittedly sold the emotional and dramatic sequences quite well. But on the other hand, his Oscar win is ludicrous as he was never that great to win a freaking Oscar, and simply more than a couple of times his comedy shtick could get very grating and annoying.
Life Is Beautiful is well made across the board. It has a very strong, moving score, especially in that famous third act, it is also well shot across the board, and I have to say that Benigni is much better in the directorial chair than as an actor as the movie is very well directed and polished across the board.
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So the movie did deserve to win for score as it’s one of the highlights in it and the director nod was fine, but the other nominations, including the one for Best Picture, were ridiculous. And the fact that it won over ‘Central Station’ in the foreign category is just shameless.
Life Is Beautiful is a typically populist flick made to appeal to the largest audiences possible for a foreign film and it truly was very successful in that goal. But for me it’s just solid with a memorable third act, solid direction, some charming scenes and a terrific score, but an emotionally manipulative approach to it that was too obvious and unsubtle. Though often grating, Roberto Benigni is fine in the main role, but certainly not deserving of a freaking Oscar. And the movie winning over ‘Central Station’ was one of the biggest injustices in the history of the foreign category.
