Life Is Beautiful

4.33
    Life Is Beautiful
    1997

    Synopsis

    A touching story of an Italian book seller of Jewish ancestry who lives in his own little fairy tale. His creative and happy life would come to an abrupt halt when his entire family is deported to a concentration camp during World War II. While locked up he tries to convince his son that the whole thing is just a game.

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    Cast

    • Roberto BenigniGuido
    • Nicoletta BraschiDora
    • Giorgio CantariniGiosué
    • Giustino DuranoZio
    • Sergio Bini BustricFerruccio
    • Marisa ParedesMadre di Dora
    • Horst BuchholzDottore Lessing
    • Lidia AlfonsiSignora Guicciardini
    • Giuliana LojodiceDirettrice Didattica
    • Amerigo FontaniRodolfo

    Recommendations

    • 100

      Film.com

      Benigni, with great help from young Cantarini, has crafted a work of such complexity that you may find both your brain and your heart simply overloaded. Which, of course, is the rarely achieved goal of all art.
    • 90

      TNT RoughCut

      Its unique message about laughing in the face of evil clearly reveals that life is beautiful.
    • 80

      The New York Times

      Benigni effectively creates a situation in which comedy is courage. And he draws from this an unpretentious, enormously likable film that plays with history both seriously and mischievously. Piety has no place here, nor do tears until the final reel. Life is Beautiful plays by its own rules
    • 80

      The A.V. Club

      The concept is not so much nihilistic as it is realistic, and the fact that Benigni has made such fine distinctions so powerfully clear is amazing and moving.
    • 70

      Film.com

      While most reviewers will accuse it of sentimentality (a charge that is justified), audiences, who don't feel the need to appear rigorous and tough-minded all the time, will flock to it in droves.
    • 67

      Entertainment Weekly

      Starts out as sentimental whimsy and ends as sentimental kitsch.
    • 50

      San Francisco Chronicle

      Benigni sets out to do the impossible.
    • 50

      Christian Science Monitor

      Has good intentions, but its exaggerated celebration of quick-witted improvisation ultimately trivializes the human and historical horrors evoked by the story.

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