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Life Is Beautiful Rant |
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About Me Diaries Photos
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Most people know my feelings
about cinema. The point of this particular rant is not the works
themselves, but rather the audiences. It seems that with some films it
would be better to watch them with half your brain turned off. This
sounds rude, but it’s not. The film that got me off down this road was
the Italian Oscar-winner Life Is Beautiful. I love it. It’s one
of my favourite films. But upon reading Amazon reviews whilst trying to
buy it, I discovered a lot of controversy. Several people saying it’s
fabulous, wonderful, life-affirming, and a few (nudging the language up
a few notches) saying it’s offensive, a mistake, the worst film ever
made.
The film, in case you haven’t seen it, is about a man sent to a
concentration camp and trying to keep the reality of the situation from
his son by turning it into a game. Some have described it as a
“holocaust comedy.” No, it’s not. It is not a film about the
Holocaust. That is clearly the setting and not the subject. It’s not a
war film. It’s about the relationship between father and son.
Apparently this is a delusion on my part. It’s a war film, it’s
trivialising the disaster, it’s not horrific enough, people who like
this film are hiding away from reality (ooh, get you), watch Schindler’s
List. I have no interest in watching Schindler’s List. This
would, apparently, prove their point, as I am now congratulating myself
on having seen a war film, one appealing to all those who ‘don’t
like that sort of thing.’ Offensive culture of schadenfraude, indeed.
Using bigger words doesn’t make you right. I’m not congratulating
myself, I don’t give a shit if it’s a war film or not. Quite beside
that, I don’t see it as a war film.
A lot of the people who saw and loved the film took it at face
value, he loves and is protecting his son, awww. Then the next level of
people, the ones who think they’re remarkably clever in having seen
flaws in a film and now get to look cleverer than everyone else, are
outraged and shocked by the lack of grisliness in a film set during a
war. But it’s not a bloody war film. It’s not meant to be the
Italian Schindler’s List. That’s where it’s set, but it’s
not what it is. I firmly believe the point has been well and truly
missed by these people. We study World War II early on. We know it was
horrendous, pointless, grisly. We know horrible things happened in
concentration camps. And if we want to watch a really gritty, realistic
War Film, we can. We have a quite stupid amount of choice. This is not
one of those films. People
who like the film have been sweepingly accused of hiding away from the
truth and pretending to be the little boy in the camp. But we know what
went on in the camps. We know. We don’t need to be shown it. Some of
the best and most successful films have achieved greatness by not
showing the grisly bits. We know what’s happening. Apparently in this
Hollywood age we need everything spelt out for us. We have no
imaginations and if we didn’t see it, it didn’t happen. Perhaps
it’s just me that finds it unnecessary to be shown every grisly thing.
The film doesn’t bill itself as a gritty, realistic portrayal of
concentration camps, and why should it? It never even occurred to me to
find it offensive. Relationships in Hollywood films are often glossy and
pretty, with no intimation of the heartache every normal couple goes
through. We call that annoying, but not offensive. And the relationship
is the subject in those films. This film shows a real, heart warming
father-son relationship.
What about the families of people who died in the concentration
camps? What about those people who did get out alive but carry the
memories of it with them forever? It’s just so disrespectful, isn’t
it? Er, no, it isn’t. A man in a concentration camp is trying to
protect his child’s life and innocence. I do not see how this is
disrespectful. If a member of your family had been in a car crash, would
you consider it ‘disrespectful’ not to see people get shattered and
bleed all over the place in a realistically horrible manner? Is it
‘disrespectful’ to cut the scene before impact? Is it
‘disrespectful’ to rape victims not to show a realistic rape in a
film? “The worst thing that happens is passing an anvil to each
other,” a few said. Not only is this a horribly constructed sentence
for someone trying to look superior to the rest of us, it’s also
bollocks. That’s the worst thing we are shown (except for the huge
pile of rotting corpses), which is the entire point of the bloody film.
Yes, the violence has been sanitised. So what? It doesn’t take a
genius director to make a realistic war film. Enough horrible tortures
have been documented. The only thing you need is a good special effects
team. This is not a war film. It’s not a Holocaust comedy. Some of
them “don’t buy that”. Fine, don’t, but it’s clearly true.
Tell me when he is saying, “Oooh, look at all the horrible things that
happened in the war, look how grisly and awful it was.”
Maybe people who watch the film do take on the role of the little
boy. What the critics don’t seem to have understood is that that might
be the POINT! The film is about the boy (incidentally, one of a very few
child actors I haven’t found intensely and terminally irritating), not
Benigni pulling silly faces. Perhaps viewpoint is not allowed in films
anymore. Perhaps if you can’t view a film as a documentary, it’s
rubbish. You liked it? You didn’t think it was a war film? You
actually dared to think it might be about something else? Well, then, I
shall have to hit you over the head with my bleak and humourless war
films. Maybe these people need to watch again, switching off the
‘history’ section of their brains. A message to any La Vita E Bella-bashers reading this. You have Missed The Point. The point has gone right over your heads, or, if you are one of these annoying pseudo-intellectual people, right between your legs. |