Watching grim news reports from Iraq lately, many people have hoped that the ongoing suffering of its people might be put into proper perspective by a funny-looking Italian bloke clowning around Baghdad in retro underwear. At last that dream has come true.
Sentimentality, slapstick, glib geopolitics, and cut-and-paste ethnic colour. On the evidence of this trailer Roberto Benigni has devised a night out at the cinema more horrible than watching the every England Test collapse against Australia since the 80s on an IMAX screen.
Well, how interesting. He’s the very same guy who made a film about the Holocaust in a somewhat similar vein– “Life is Beautiful”, which centres round a father persuading his son that the Nazis they face in the death camp they are sent to are in fact playing an elaborate game. The film was very well received, and some friends of mine liked it. I couldn’t bring myself to see it. It seemed so outrageous, such a travesty of what I know the experience of the camps and just about anywhere under Nazi occupation to have been like for Jews that it would not remotely have been possible to persuade a child that what was happening was just a game. Benigni actually got an Oscar for his performance as the father in the film.
This one will probably not get such fulsome acclaim because it sounds as if it doesn’t include the requisite Bushblairhitler message.