rob-169

usually a movie that starts bad stays bad in a monotonically descending pattern. This bad movie started to seem to get better before going into a steep dive. The acting, save for the male antagonist, was awful. The plot was essentially a set up for the final main scene, which is probably good as performance art, but it was wasted in this movie. Not sure why this movie was made.

There is beauty and sadness and obviously grace in this movie. The high contrast film used evokes Rembrandt, not in a sentimental way, but to imply the presence of a spirit greater than simply flesh. Sometimes Ed Harris's body would disappear and his head would gleam in a black background. Much was not said but implied here, yet there were false steps that broke the tone of this movie, the miracles in the US were to literal, while the movie was mostly working on the level of subtle metaphor, this was simply not necessary, Harris's strugle with his god contraposed with the naive love of the woman/Saint was all we needed to power this movie, the coincidences and mechanical miracles belonged to a different movie. This being said, the miracle of the bombs not dropping was actually done very well and could have easily sustained the power of the movie. Perhaps there was just too much to tell within the time constraints imposed. At anyrate, there is much to recommend in this great, flawed effort. Notes: Ann Heche was good as always, but why does she always have to have love affairs with men 20 years or older than her

I saw this movie although I had a strong sense beforehand that it was drastically misguided, after seeing it, I realized that it was far worse than I could have imagined. Roberto Benigni in his benighted way, probably thinks what he did here was heroic, I can excuse poor judgement and taste in an artist, but for the life of me, I cannot fathom how anything so misbegotten could be so popular and somewhat critically acclaimed. Certainly, there are true stories of incredible bravery, fortitude and even humor in the face of such unrelenting evil, but these are true stories (like the escape from Sobibor). Benigni, however, creates, out of whole cloth, as far as I can tell, a fairy tale which uses the Holocaust as background. He creates a character and situations that could simply not exist under such conditions and are not even remotely related to anyone or anything in the history of the holocaust. To further compound the problem, he constructs Aushwitz-lite in which the latter half of the movie takes place. A place with gas chambers, unrelenting, (but Chaplin-esque) hard labor, and with such seemingly lax security that Benigni's character can commandeer the camp's PA system, and effectively hide his son. Further, the inmates, who in reality, were starved and worked to death never appeared more than "bushed." These fictional liberties, to my mind, are unforgiveable. The Holocaust is always foreground, and there is no "lite" available. The germans simply killed you, unrelentingly, for any reason whatsoever. Further, one of the worst aspects of arrival at a death camp like Aushwitz was the sudden separation (culling) of the children from the parents, husbands from wives. This activity, never overlooked, immediately told the prisoners they had passed from the land of the living into hell. Somehow this little fact was passed over by Benigni. He simply keeps his son with him. Indeed, none of the playful little camp activities portrayed could have ever existed for even a milli-second. Benigni's story could have taken place in any particular bad situation, why set it in a concentration camp. Perhaps my reaction seems humorless, but really, the humor here is strained and out of place. What was he thinking? Evil triumphed, millions were dispatched in the most monstrous of conditions. Nothing can modify this, the pure fact of its occurrence makes interpretation, let alone heart warming entertainment an impossibility.