At the
Movies
Holocaust comedy an unlikely triumph; novel flops on
screen
By JOSEPH CUNNEEN
Can comedy go too far? Roberto
Benigni is an irrepressible performer, perhaps the most popular star in Italy.
In Life is Beautiful (Miramax), however, he extends the range of farce
to the unspeakable: Nazi death camps. I assumed the movie would be offensive,
not only to Jewish audiences. Now I believe youll be deeply moved--
laughing all the while.
Benigni is Guido, an irrepressible, fast-talking Jewish waiter,
who spends the first third of the movie finding inventive ways of surprising
Dora (Nicoletta Braschi), a pretty, aristocratic-looking teacher whom he calls
Principessa. We are in Fascist Italy, 1938, and the best of Guidos comic
turns is an improvised speech explaining why Italians are a superior race,
delivered while pretending to be a school inspector. No more a matinee idol
than Woody Allen, he leaps on a desk, asks the students where they could find
someone more handsome -- showing them his superior Italian bellybutton.
Convinced by the philosophy of his sidekick Ferruccio (Sergio Bustric) that
willpower can create reality, Guido succeeds in liberating Dora from the
pompous official she was supposed to marry.
The charming courtship leads into a greenhouse; when they emerge
its 1944, and they have an irresistible little boy, Giosué
(Giorgio Cantarini). Suddenly the fathers Jewishness, which is never made
concrete, is a danger. He and Giosué are arrested, and the rest of the
movie shows Guido telling his son one lie after another in order to shield him
from the awareness of horror. What? Seats on a train? Guido asks
him as they board a cattle car. Its obvious youve never been
on one.
When they reach the camp, the atmosphere is as bleak as the
prisoners uniforms, but Guido tells his son to remain concealed in the
barracks. Its all a game where the prize is a real tank, he insists, and
in which they can win the most points by being tough. There are genuine laughs
as Guido pretends to translate Nazi commands into Italian for the prisoners,
but our anxiety is intense, especially since Dora had jumped into a cattle car
in order to join her family and is occasionally seen in the womens
section of the prison.
While there was no way to make Life is Beautiful an
upbeat date movie, the audience I was with was deeply moved and
applauded spontaneously at its end.
I dont question Benignis good intentions, but he
stretches the improbabilities of Guidos deception of Giosué to the
breaking point. In having Guido protect Giosués innocence,
Life is Beautiful also protects mine. By concentrating exclusively
on the plight of one family, it turns the other deportees into zombies, and the
movies frenetic pace makes it impossible to reflect on the consequences
of Guidos comic maneuvers.
Benignis clowning recalls the irrepressible spirit of
Chaplins tramp, but I remain uneasy that a movie dealing with the Shoah
should somehow leave us comforted. Life is Beautiful is certainly a
deeply human story that shows how humor and creative imagination are necessary
in any struggle against bureaucratic cruelty. Even though it makes no pretense
at realism, it also raises troubling questions regarding the limits of
entertainment. Its a movie to see for yourself.
Pleasantville (New Line
Cinema) arrived with an entertaining premise: Two 1990s teenagers are pulled
back into the 50s, playing out stories in an old-style sitcom modeled on
Father Knows Best. Its easy to go along with the trickery
that takes David (Tobey Maguire) and his sister Jennifer (Reese Witherspoon)
back to a place in which they become Bud and Mary Sue, and everything is in
black and white. The trouble is that writer-director Gary Ross is never clear
about what he is satirizing, and the movie collapses under the weight of
contradictory impulses.
Jeannine Oppewalls production design is the best thing in
the movie. As people and things begin to change, they turn from black and white
into living color.
Jennifer, however, is too brashly aggressive as she introduces
Pleasantville kids to sex. Jennifer even instructs her sitcom mother, Betty
(Joan Allen), when the latter asks, Whats sex? Cut to Betty
taking an ecstatic bath, as all the colors explode.
Ross piles on other confused bits of didacticism. In their
reactionary befuddlement, the townsfolk organize against the
colored -- those who have begun to change. David is responsible for
Pleasantville teenagers suddenly developing a passion for books, which
culminates in his sister turning down sex because she has to study and exiting
from the sitcom to take a bus to the nearby college.
Pleasantville pretends to make its presentation of
past and present evenhanded by balancing the dramatic moment when Dad gets home
and finds no dinner and Davids problem when he returns to the 1990s and
has to deal with the confused life of his divorced mother. Unfortunately, it
lacks the wit to illuminate either the 1950s or the 90s, reducing both to
clichés.
Beloved (Touchstone) was the
movie event of the season, receiving the imprimatur of Time before its
opening. Without Oprahs clout it wouldnt have been made, and
Jonathan Demme should be saluted for his courage in trying to translate Toni
Morrisons hauntingly lyric novel into screen terms.
Everyone connected with the movie labored to be faithful to the
novel, but the result only underlines elements that the writer can convey more
successfully than a movie director. At the beginning (1873), for example, Sethe
(Oprah Winfrey) and her daughter Denver (Kimberley Elise) are living in a house
haunted by a ghost, the daughter Sethe had killed 18 years earlier in order to
keep the child from growing up in slavery. Whereas the novels opening is
haunting, suggestive, and mysteriously indirect, the movie is literal and
sensational, like a Halloween horror film.
Since the screenwriters emphasize the present, the movie lacks the
novels oppressive sense of slaverys past. Although Oprah registers
a survivors tenacity, no actress could convey the horror and pain that is
so deeply embedded in the imagination of Morrisons heroine.
The past is sometimes recalled in lengthy narrative, and Paul D
(Danny Glover) impressively summarizes his long years of wandering before he
arrives at Sethes house, banishes the ghost and becomes Sethes
lover. Lisa Gay Hamilton projects strong feelings of abandonment and rage as
the young Sethe, giving birth to Denver in a sinking boat, but Im not
sure whether those who havent read the novel will always understand what
is taking place.
Demmes best work is in quieter moments as the seasons shift
around Sethes house, and we watch the butterflies and the nearby river.
There are memorable images: the party Sethe gives for Beloved and Denver,
Cincinnatis hog pens, Denvers courage as she leaves the old house
to look for a job.
Most inspiring are the shots of the revivalist meetings led by
Sethes mother-in-law, Baby Suggs (Beah Richards). When she cries out to
the assembled community, Love your own bodies, we begin to get a
sense of the womanpower that has been at the center of African-American
endurance. n
Joseph Cunneen has just resigned from Cross Currents,
after editing the interreligious quarterly for 48 years.
National Catholic Reporter, November 20,
1998
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