Movie #70 – Life Is Beautiful (1997) - 116 min, cert PG.
Guido Orefice is an Italian Jew. In 1939, just before the start of Second World War, he meets a pretty young woman named Dora, and uses his zany sense of humour to win her heart. Five or six years later, just before the end of the war, they are married with a son. They are rounded up and sent to a Nazi death camp where Guido tries to hide the horrific truth of what is happening to them from his son. He uses the same sense of humour to pretend it is all some kind of game.
This was very much a film of two halves. The first half of the film deals with the way Guido woos Dora, and then the remainder takes place in the camp. I found the first half rather dull. About forty minutes into it I very nearly turned it off. If I hadn’t been watching it for my 250 Challenge then I probably would have done. And that would have been a shame because I would have missed the second, much better, half. I would rather have seen much less of the romance at the start – half an hour would have been ample. Then that extra running time could have been used in the camp scenes, which I wanted to see more of.
I would have liked to see more of Dora in the camp. She seemed to pop up occasionally, just to give a reaction to Guido’s latest antic, and then disappear again. This is a woman who effectively volunteered for the camp. She’s not Jewish, so she didn’t need to be there. She went to be near her family, only to be separated from them upon arrival and never see them. I wanted to see more of what she was going through.
Score – 7/10. The first half was dull. The second was good, but could have been better. So 70 films in, my top ten looks much as it did ten films ago, except LA Confidential has come in at No 8, dropping Memento off the bottom.
1. The Good, the Bad and the Ugly (1966)
2. Pulp Fiction (1994)
3. Forrest Gump (1994)
4. Amelie (2001)
5. Fight Club (1999)
6. The Shawshank Redemption (1994)
7. Toy Story 3 (2010)
8. The Silence of the Lambs (1991)
9. L.A. Confidential (1997)
10. WALL-E (2008)
Next up is Back to the Future. A time-travel paradox movie done really well. The franchise lost its way a bit in the sequels, but the original is still a great film.
No comments:
Post a Comment