Video Source: PLUTO TV app
Life is beautiful through the eyes of the hero (Benigni) because he is so chirpy and infectiously positive about everything and seems to be always falling into comedic situations. He is mistaken for a king in one scene and masquerades as a school superintendent in another. He falls over the heroine twice and valiantly kidnaps her on a horse painted green while she is being married to another man.
The movie uses fast editing to indicate the passage of time as we see the heroine enter a room covered with strings of flowers when they have just married and out walks their child about 5 years old and gets on his dad's bicycle !
But then the story takes a turn; we hear the innocent boy ask his dad why a store sign says ‘No Jews or dogs allowed ‘ and the father, in order to maintain the young boy’s innocence says ‘It does not matter. Some stores have signs saying cats and dogs are not allowed or spiders and roaches not allowed’.
It was the time of Nazi Germany and so angry German soldiers take captive hundreds of Italian Jewish men who are taken to a prison concentration camp. The young boy is forced to stay with his father in a crowded room, which has wooden bunk beds where several dozen men are squeezed in! They are separated from the mother who is in another part of the camp !
To avoid the kid from panicking, his dad tells him that this is all a game and at the end they will win a tank. He continues this positive charade in front of the kid till the very end. Specially hilarious is the scene where he volunteers as a German to English translator for a German soldier without knowing a word of German language!
In the end, our hero goes out looking for his wife after hiding his son in a metallic box on a street and is shot by a German soldier. Then the streets become empty as the German soldiers seem to have vanished. The young boy comes out from his hiding place and stands on the empty street when he hears the rumble of an approaching tank. The tank stops very close to him. (This is the tank which his dad had promised he would win at the end of the game.) Out pops the head of a cheerful American soldier who invites the young boy to climb onto the tank. You see, the Americans are here to save him and his country from the Germans!
Which is why this movie won Oscars! I remember watching slim Benigni jumping over the heads of the seated audience to reach the Oscar stage after hearing his name being announced!
It's a beautifully sad movie. Benigni does a great job as a director and actor….his efforts to keep the facts hidden from the future generations represented by his son in the movie by making the movie light hearted seems to have paid off. Holocaust is serious business and is hard to watch on the screen (Schindler's List) for many of us!
