美丽人生 电影英文简介

La vita è bella

INTRO

La vita è bella (or “life is beautiful”), a 1997 Italian tragic comedy-drama film ,tells a story of a man named Guido Orefice, a Jewish Italian book shop owner, who dares to find humor and tenderness in the midst of the Holocaust, employing his fertile imagination to shield his son from the horrors of internment in a Nazi concentration camp.

STORY

The film depicts the changing political climate in Italy: Guido frequently imitates members of the National Fascist Party, skewering their racist logic and pseudoscientific reasoning. In the town, Guido survives by quick improvisation. Mistaken for a school inspector, he invents a quick lecture on Italian racial superiority, demonstrating the excellence of his big ears and superb navel.

In 1945, Hitler's anti-Semitism had slithered its slimy way across Europe, tearing apart the Orefice family. Guido and his 5 year old son, Joshua, are packed in to a train filled with desperate souls, towards a concentrate camp. Gazing in to Joshua ’s lucent, innocent eyes, instinct stuck him: “this is all a game”, he says to his son.

In the camp, Guido congers up a fictional bubble for his son to live in shielding him from the ruthless truth. In his “elaborate game”, the first one to get 1,000 points will win a tank--not a toy tank but a real one, which Joshua can drive all over town. Guido acts as the translator for a German who is barking orders at the inmates, freely translating them into Italian designed to quiet his son's fears. And he literally hides the child from the camp guards, with rules of the game that have the boy crouching on a high sleeping platform and remaining absolutely still. Guido uses this game to explain features of the concentration camp that would otherwise be scary for a young child: the guards are mean only because they want the tank for themselves; the dwindling numbers of children (who are being killed) are only hiding in order to score more points than Joshua so they can win the game. He puts off Joshua's requests to end the game and return home by convincing him that they are in the lead for the tank, and need only wait a short while before they can return home with their tank.

Despite being surrounded by the misery, sickness, and death at the camp, Joshua does not question this fiction because of his father's convincing performance and his own innocence. Guido maintains this story right until the end when, in the chaos of shutting down the camp as the Americans approach, he tells his son to stay in a sweatbox until everybody has left, this being the final competition before the tank is his. As the camp is in chaos Guido goes off to find Dora, but while he is out he is caught by a Nazi soldier. The soldier makes the decision to execute Guido. Guido is led off by the soldier to be executed. While the soldier is leading him to his death, Guido passes by

Joshua one last time, still in character and playing the game. The next morning, Joshua emerges from the sweatbox as the camp is occupied by an American armored division. Joshua thinks he has won the game because Guido had told him that whoever got to one thousand points would get a tank. The soldiers free all of the captives in the concentration camp and lead them to a safer place. While they are traveling, the soldiers allow Joshua to ride on the front of the tank with them. During their travels, Joshua spots Dora in the procession leaving the camp. Her mother, overwhelmed with happiness and relief, finds out that though after the tormenting experience of the concentrated camps, her son’s heart still remains untainted.

REVIEWS

The movie has stirred up venomous opposition from the right wing in Italy. At Cannes, it offended some left-wing critics with its use of humor in connection with the Holocaust. What may be most offensive to both wings is its sidestepping of politics in favor of simple human ingenuity. The film finds the right notes to negotiate its delicate subject matter. And Benigni, the director and main actor of the film, isn't really making comedy out of the Holocaust, anyway. He is showing how Guido uses the only gift at his command to protect his son. If he had a gun, he would shoot at the Fascists. If he had an army, he would destroy them. He is a clown, and comedy is his weapon.

WWII was defiantly a dark period in human history, and that there was nothing "funny" about this evil era that claimed the lives of 8 million innocent people. Yet "Life is Beautiful" was never offensive to me; it is a tribute to hope and love. I just introduced this film to my twelve year old daughters, to inspire them that even during the bleakest of times, the human spirit can triumph over despair.

The movie actually softens the Holocaust slightly, to make the humor possible at all. In the real death camps there would be no role for Guido. But "Life Is Beautiful" is not about Nazis and Fascists, but about the human spirit. It is about rescuing whatever is good and hopeful from the wreckage of dreams, about hope for the future, about the necessary human conviction, or delusion, that things will be better for our children than they are right now.

Extra info:

Part of the film came from Benigni's own family history; before Roberto's birth, his father had survived three years of internment at the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp. The film was a critical and financial success, winning 3 Oscar awards.