Life Is Beautiful - a movie review

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Life is beautiful through the eyes of the hero (Benigni) because he is so chirpy and infectiously  positive about everything and seems to be always running around on his bicycle. (I think it is a dubbed Italian movie.)

As the movie progresses, we see him successfully get his girl friend and marry her as well. The movie uses quick editing to indicate the passage of time as we see the heroine enter a room covered with strings of flowers when they have just married and out walks their child about 5 years old and gets on his dad's bicycle ! 

But it was the time of Nazi Germany and so angry German soldiers appear from somewhere and take captive hundreds of Italian men who are taken  to a prison camp. The young boy is forced to stay with his father in a crowded room which has wooden bunk beds where several dozen men are squeezed in! They are separated from the mother who is in another part of the camp !

To avoid the kid from panicking, his dad tells him that this is a game and at the end they will win a tank. He continues this positive charade in front of the kid till the end. Specially hilarious is the scene where he volunteers as a German to English translator for a German soldier without knowing any German! 

In the end, our hero goes out looking for his wife after hiding his son in a metallic box on a street and is shot and killed just like that by a German soldier. Then the streets become empty as the German soldiers seem to have vanished. The young boy comes out from his hiding place and stands on the empty street when he hears the roar of an approaching tank.  He stands his ground when the tank stops very close to him. (This is the tank which his dad had promised he would win at the end of the game.) Out pops the head of a cheerful American soldier from the tank who invites the young boy to climb onto the tank. You see, the Americans are here to save him and his country from the Germans!

Which is why this movie won Oscars! I remember watching slim Benigni jumping over the heads of the seated audience to reach the Oscar stage after hearing his name being announced!

It's a beautifully sad movie.