I now admire Roberto Benigni all the more. I don't know exactly what happened, but I suspect it was something like this: Benigni saw the "Train of Life" script, thought to himself, "great idea, lousy script - I can do better" ... then he went away and DID better, making a completely different film based on an completely different idea that must have looked, on paper, far less promising. The films are so different that further comparison is silly, except to say this much: as I watched "Train of Life" I thought to myself, "I sure hope this was written and directed by Jews, because otherwise it's in extremely poor taste"; as I watched "Life is Beautiful", no such thought occurred to me. It didn't matter. A film as good as Benigni's justifies itself.
Maybe there's a kind of Yiddish humour here I'm not getting, or getting and not particularly liking. The latter is more likely, since I can see how this would work if it were a printed or spoken story. As a film, the nicest thing I can say is that done properly it probably could have amounted to something valuable. Two things prevent it from doing so. One: we're never as impressed as we should be by the villagers' ingenuity. Take the "communists", who are impossible to take seriously, yet who seriously endanger themselves and everyone else with their random squabbling. Are we really meant to sympathise with people so stupid? I wanted them to survive, but I'd have had an easier time doing so if they'd had some sense of self-preservation themselves. And two: I'm surprised that something with so many close-up shots with a wide-angle lens and such monotonous editing was released in cinemas at all. It was as if Mahaileanu was determined that no detail would be lost when the film played on television. Alas, I think he succeeded.
(It was also a mistake to substitute French for Yiddish - yes, I'm aware that films produced in the English-speaking world are guilty of greater crimes, but that's no reason to pardon this particular one. At one point a character tells us that Yiddish is German spoken with a sense of humour, which is a great line - but our ears tell us that "Yiddish" sounds nothing at all like German, and quite a lot like French.)
Although the film is a poor one, its plot ideas are good enough for sheer good will to carry us through. And the surprise at the end has the required effect. I'm not sure if I approve of this surprise. It served a more worthwhile purpose than a similar surprise in [a 1990s film I can't name - you'll know what I mean if you've seen it], but it was just as much a cheat.
Maybe there's a kind of Yiddish humour here I'm not getting, or getting and not particularly liking. The latter is more likely, since I can see how this would work if it were a printed or spoken story. As a film, the nicest thing I can say is that done properly it probably could have amounted to something valuable. Two things prevent it from doing so. One: we're never as impressed as we should be by the villagers' ingenuity. Take the "communists", who are impossible to take seriously, yet who seriously endanger themselves and everyone else with their random squabbling. Are we really meant to sympathise with people so stupid? I wanted them to survive, but I'd have had an easier time doing so if they'd had some sense of self-preservation themselves. And two: I'm surprised that something with so many close-up shots with a wide-angle lens and such monotonous editing was released in cinemas at all. It was as if Mahaileanu was determined that no detail would be lost when the film played on television. Alas, I think he succeeded.
(It was also a mistake to substitute French for Yiddish - yes, I'm aware that films produced in the English-speaking world are guilty of greater crimes, but that's no reason to pardon this particular one. At one point a character tells us that Yiddish is German spoken with a sense of humour, which is a great line - but our ears tell us that "Yiddish" sounds nothing at all like German, and quite a lot like French.)
Although the film is a poor one, its plot ideas are good enough for sheer good will to carry us through. And the surprise at the end has the required effect. I'm not sure if I approve of this surprise. It served a more worthwhile purpose than a similar surprise in [a 1990s film I can't name - you'll know what I mean if you've seen it], but it was just as much a cheat.