Life is Beautiful

Roberto Benigni`s tremendously ambitious comedy deals with that most challenging of subjects, the Holocaust. The first half of the film, which is set in a Tuscan town in the late 30s, is hilarious as newcomer Guido, played by the director, finds work as waiter in a smart hotel and falls hopelessly in love with Dora, Nicoletta Braschi, the local schoolteacher. A few years later they`re married with a son Guido adores: but Guido`s a Jew, and when he and his boy are interned in a concentration camp, he tries to alleviate the horror for his son by pretenting it`s all a game...

This is very tricky territory, but not without precedent - Chaplin made fun of Hitler and the Nazis in The Great Dictator - a film which the first half of Life Is Beautiful resembles - and Ernst Lubitsch, a Jew, dared to make a farce about the occupation of Poland in 1942 with To Be Or Not To Be. Benigni is a brilliant comedian, and a brave one - Life Is Beautiful has plenty of classical slapstick comedy, but Benigni isn`t content with making us laugh at the pomposity and stupidity of the fascists - he wants to jolt us into taking a fresh approach to the crime of genocide - a tall order for a comedy. I`m not sure that he pulls it off - above all, the horror is missing. But for many this will be an impressive, thought-provoking experience.