Something Cult, Foreign-Language or Indie #2: Life Is Beautiful (1997).

I wanted to post something for Father's Day, and what better movie to review for that occasion than this?

Roberto Benigni's Oscar-winning 1997 tragicomic masterpiece Life Is Beautiful, in which a loving father turns life in a Nazi concentration camp into an adventurous game to protect his four-year-old son's life and innocence. It is utterly beguiling.

Guido Orefice (Benigni) is a young Jewish Italian waiter who comes to Rome in 1930 to work in his uncle's restaurant, where he meets and immediately falls desperately in love with wealthy girl Dora (Benigni's real-life wife Nicoletta Braschi). But of course she is already engaged to an older and very pompous man who considers Guido a laughable kultz. But Guido is determined to win Dora over, and pulls every stop out, including serenading her with the red-carpet treatment during a stormy night, after saving her from injury several times. And then, jump forward to 1939. Guido and Dora are now married with their son Joshua (Giorgio Cantarini), who helps his father run a bookstore, when the Nazis invade Italy and take the Orefices to separate camps.

Now, hear me out: this is largely a very misunderstood movie. Upon its release it somewhat understandably offended many left-wing critics with its combination of romantic comedy and Holocaust drama, but Benigni actually based it loosely on his own father's experiences as a prisoner in Bergen-Belsen for two years, and he and co-screenwriter Vincenzo Cerami consulted several Jewish groups for feedback before production. And whatever its origins, this film was never meant to trivialise or sanitise the Holocaust at all but rather to highlight the transcendental power of love and imagination in even the darkest, most desperate circumstances. It's a movie with serious balls, and even more heart.

And, it was obviously a labour of love for everybody involved. Benigni as director so cleverly stages the comic set pieces, particularly prominent in the first half, before very tenderly filming the scenes with father and son confronting their new lives and then finally nailing the suspense and emotion of the final act, all the while getting delightful performances from all his cast, including himself. His and Cerami's screenplay delivers one genuinely witty gag after another while perfectly evoking the mood and mores of the era with no plot holes or (unintentional) anachronisms in sight, and Nicola Piovani's score I'm sure won the Oscar by a landslide.

Nonetheless, I can still see how Life Is Beautiful can be a polarizing experience, and Benigni probably didn't quite deserve that Best Actor Oscar over Ian McKellen (Gods and Monsters) or Edward Norton (American History X). But for live action, this would have to be my favourite of all foreign-language movies. It is pure magic. And who can possibly forget Sophia Loren at the 1999 Oscars, opening the envelope and gleefully shouting "ROBERTOOOO!"?

Happy Father's Day!