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Life is so beautiful, we have TWO essays about this film... Is that too beautiful? Faith, Hope,
and Love…and Humor
Life is Beautiful is an anomaly among films and literature about the Holocaust. Director Roberto Benigni's decision to set his Holocaust narrative in the genre of comedy and fantasy sounds like a formula for disaster. However, Life is Beautiful wisely manages the tension between the stark reality of life during the Holocaust and Benigni's comic antics through a well-presented story that powerfully connects with human experience. A helpful heuristic for understanding Life is Beautiful is found in the Apostle Paul's reflections on the dynamic relationship of faith, hope and love in 1 Corinthians 13. After detailing the qualities of love, the Apostle concludes: "For now we see in a mirror, dimly, but then we will see face to face. Now I know only in part; then I will know fully, even as I have been fully known. And now faith, hope, and love abide, these three; and the greatest of these is love." Life is Beautiful demonstrates the dynamic relationship between faith, hope, and love, and helps us to see how this relationship serves as a foundation for holy humor.
Love sustains Life is Beautiful. The first hour of thefilm traces the growth of Guido and Dora's mutual fascination with one another, courtship, and, ultimately, marriage. But, why spend half of a film on the horrors of the Holocaust on a fairy-tale romance? The love that Guido and Dora share extends through the second half of the film, sustaining them through their lives in the concentration camp. The transition that takes place is that fairy-tale romance becomes self-sacrificing love. We see self-giving love through Guido who turns his whole will to preserving the lives of Dora and Joshua, even at the eventual cost of his own life. However, Dora also powerfully embodies self-giving love when she asks German officers to place her on the train so that she can be near Guido and Joshua. The moral authority that Dora wields in her decision to board the trains to the concentration camps is reminiscent of Jesus as he "resolutely sets his face toward Jerusalem" in the gospel tradition. Both Guido and Dora begin with the foundation of fairy tale fascination that buds into romantic love, and is fulfilled in this story in self-sacrificial love. Hope is both the product and engine that drives both faith and love. Hope results from the quality of love that Guido and Dora share and drives the willpower Guido uses to woo Dora and keep Joshua alive in the concentration camp. Jurgen Moltmann, taking a cue from Ernst Bloch, suggests that hope is not grounded in possible future events, but rather pulled into being from fulfilled future events. Guido employs this same framework for hope with Joshua when he wants to leave the game (and, most importantly, the camp). Guido re-articulates to Joshua (through his conversation with other prisoners) the future reality that frames the possibility of present hope: winning the game and the grand prize - a tank. Compelled by reliving the story, Joshua clings again to the hope of ultimate victory. This vision, which is realized in the film, pulls the present toward itself and, in doing so, demonstrates the generative power of hope to direct present action toward a future reality. When faith, love, and hope are at work as described above, the possibility for humor arises. If there is no fundamental faith, a lesser hope emerges. If there is not love, then the trust essential to faith cannot be built and there is no hope. And if there is no hope, there is no future; if there is no way to rise above the tyranny of the present, then hope does not truly exist. However, when faith, hope and love are fulfilled in the ways demonstrated in Life is Beautiful, humor emerges. For this reason, Life is Beautiful is a "divine comedy." With faith, hope and love fully intact among the main characters, humor is able to inhabit even the most tragic scenes of the film.
Life is Beautiful is a masterwork whose narrative power lies in its exploration of the dynamic relationship between faith, hope and love, and in showing how humor can be the appropriate genre for engaging a faithful, hopeful and loving treatment of tragedy. Carl F. Flynn serves as the Director of Student Administrative Services and Adjunct Professor of Religion at Pepperdine University. © Carl F. Flynn 2005
It has been said that great artists are those willing to take great risks in their work. If so, then we must include Roberto Benigni among such. Critics and the general public were understandably skeptical when they heard that one of Italy's top comedians was making a film about the Holocaust. It seemed unimaginable to link laughter with mass murder on such a huge scale that the mind cannot fathom it. Even the great Charles Chaplin, an inspiration for Mr. Benigni, stated after the end of World War Two, when the horrific facts of the Holocaust had been brought to light, that had he known the full scale of the Nazis' monstrous crimes in 1940, he would not have made The Great Dictator. A few might recall Czech filmmaker Karel Kachyna's memorable The Last Butterfly, in which Tom Courteney plays a French mime whom the Gestapo forces to organize a group of Jewish children into staging a musical production of "Hansel and Gretel." However, this was not really a comedy, but instead, a drama laced with the humor of the mime's mimicking the Nazi salute, an act so funny that it elicited laughter even from Nazis in the audience. That the Italian filmmaker has pulled off the seemingly impossible by creating a comedy on the Holocaust that was not offensive to Jewish viewers might seem like a minor miracle. Actually, it might be more proper to view the film as a celebration of the power of a father's love and imagination over the forces of hatred and brutishness, as the Holocaust serves more as context than subject. Even when father and son are caught in the Nazi's vicious web and packed off to a concentration camp, we are spared the usual grim scenes of beatings, shootings, and gassing-just once do we see a pile of bodies, reminding us forcibly of the source of the smoke that pours out of the camp's tall smokestacks. Some have been critical of the first half of the film as being nothing but the whimsical story of the wooing of Guido's beloved Dora (glowingly played by Nicoletta Braschi, Mr. Benigni's real life wife). In a series of incidents filled with coincidences and physical humor worthy of Chaplin, our Jewish hero wins the hand of the gentile Dora. They marry, have a son whom they name Giosue (Joshua), and Guido becomes a bookseller. But, earlier in the film, we received a foretaste of the darkness to come when Guido, impersonating a school inspector from Rome, gives to the assembled students a speech on the supposed superiority of the Italian race that is filled with delightful nonsense. Then there is the scene in which the school principal and Dora's suitor glibly reduce the elimination of thousands of undesirables to a problem in mathematics for the children to solve. Also there is that shop window sign that reads, "No dogs or Jews allowed." Note Guido's funny, fanciful explanation to his puzzled son, as this is a foretaste of how Guido will handle the far more difficult situation in the Nazi concentration camp. Guido's imagination, joined to his humor and love, provides a wonderful barrier to shield the boy from the horrors going on outside the barracks. By turning their imprisonment into a game, he is able to convince the boy to stay calm and hidden. And, as we see at the bittersweet conclusion of the film, the father's telling the boy that the grand prize for the winner of the game will be a tank, better than the boy's toy one, is fulfilled in a marvelous way. Comedy and humor often grow out of circumstances of oppression, when one group has unjust power over another, as witness the thousands of commissar jokes circulating in Eastern Europe during the height of Soviet oppression. Charlie Chaplin's Little Tramp, living at the fringe of society, was always butting heads with the rubes, police, and bosses of his day, outwitting them so cleverly that he endeared himself to millions of people around the world who also held little power. Jesus used humor when he lampooned the efforts of those who thought their wealth could buy their way into heaven by comparing their efforts to a camel struggling to pass through the eye of a needle. (How many sober Bible scholars missed the point by trying to "explain" this saying!)
The film requires a certain amount of suspension of belief-twice the narrator (the grown-up Joshua) says it is "like a fable"--but all in all, it is a wonderful parable of the power of imagination and love confronting unspeakable evil, a good example of what Michael C. Smith means, "Perhaps laughter is a form of grace." The ending of the film, with its costly sacrifice, will tear at the heart, but the wonderful way in which Guido's promise that he who wins the "resort contest" will be awarded a tank comes true for the boy is a joy to behold. There is crucifixion in this film, but the bright smile we see on little Guido's face suggests that even in the midst of deepest darkness the power of sacrificial love ultimately leads to the light of resurrection. Edward McNulty, a Presbyterian minister, edits the quarterly film journal Visual Parables (to see his reviews go to visualparables.net and click onto the "Current Movies" tab). His most recent book is Praying the Movies II: More Daily Meditations from Classic Films. |
Faith
is taken up in the opening scenes of Life is Beautiful in a conversation
between Guido (Roberto Benigni) and Ferruccio about Arthur Schopenhauer's
philosophy of will. Guido embraces a mystical conception of will-to-power
whereby he believes he can shape the course of events by acting in accord
with his will for the future. Guido uses his willpower both to entice
the gaze of Dora during an opera, and to ward off a dog that threatens
to expose his hidden son. A more pragmatic strain of this philosophy is
seen as Guido narrates present circumstances to shape the future. With
Dora, Guido narrates a present encounter with her in the past tense to
persuade her to fulfill his fantasy. In its most profound form in the
film, however, Guido re-narrates the experience of the concentration camp
in terms of a game for the sake of his son, Joshua. When Joshua calls
into question Guido's narration of reality based on other stories, Guido
calls into question Joshua's faith: "Do you believe them?" While
several characters in the film use traditional Christian language throughout
the film, this simplified appropriation of Schopenhauer's will to power
forms the heart of Guido's faith throughout Life is Beautiful.
Several
reviewers saw the comedic elements of Life is Beautiful as a glib
treatment of the horrors of the Holocaust. However, the central insight
Benigni brings to the screen is that even an evil of this magnitude must
not lead to hopeless despair. Rather, humor's presence signals hope, for
only genuine hope has the ability to see beyond the present to an alternative
understanding of the future. As Benigni himself said in one interview,
sometimes only clowns can reach the summit of tragedy.
Fable
of Hope
If
comedy and humor are not to end in sarcasm and cynicism, then they must
be grounded in hope, a ridiculous belief, given existing circumstances,
that things will get better-as in the case of that childless, geriatric
couple three thousand years ago who set forth on a journey to found a
new people, and who ultimately named their long promised and much delayed
offspring "Laughter" (Isaac) - for what could be funnier than a child
born to such a couple? Refusing to give in to despair because of his great
love for his son, Guido goes to great, elaborate, ridiculous lengths to
shield him from the horrors of their situation. His costly love is similar
to that of a God who wept over a rebellious nation that regarded as a
son, "How can I give you up, O E'phraim! How can I hand you over, O Israel!"
(Hosea 11:8a)