War is a painful subject,so any artist that uses it as backdrop for a comedy is threading on weak ground.
Yet Benigni manages to pull it off in The Tiger and the Snow,which starts with a comedy,but follows with a detour through the love and devotion and an exploration of what is it to be human. Most significantly,he manages to show that Iraq at the beginning of the war as full of humans,full of people.
The reviews were cruel with this movie,accusing it of being a vehicle for Benigni and his wife,Braschi,so after a little googling I found some enthusiast reviewers. Craver talks about the beauty of the film,and another one writes on poetry,as OTM says,and one of their commenters writes back about their marvel at the discovery process when explaining the world. Yes,the film centers on poetry,but it is not the poetry alone what marks so much the love that Attilio feels for this woman.
There is the love,of course,but what shows up at the beginning is a desperate stalker that somehow seems to be funny. The film is much more than funny,so you might be disappointed if you were looking for something comical in nature.
This movie unfolds at its own pace,starting as light romantic comedy,a buffoon that clowns around in his underwear engaged in pretty stereotypical situations.
And then it turns serious.
Bad news reach this comic professor,and off he goes into Iraq,the film weaving the despair and sadness of the war into the desperate love of a man full of words and lacking on deeds. Only that,under the war and the urgency,that professed love becomes real,while the painful backdrop of a civilization slowly collapsing shows the human side of those Iraqi looters,the adroitness of the professor and the words of the charmer disappearing in front of the life or death situation of all of those he loves. The Iraqis are human,and suffer and pray and die;the American soldiers are human as well,and are scared and tense and compassionate. The Iraqis care,and suffer,and feel as well that pain.
It is telling that,in the last scene,he remains calm,mute,silent,the caged birds recalling that impossibility to tell stories that he once had,as a kid,when words were simply unfit to tell that amazing story. And thus,he remains eloquently silent.
This is a gorgeous movie.
[...] Mercurial wrote an interesting post today on Tiger and SnowHere’s a quick excerpt War is a painful subject,so any artist that uses it as backdrop for a comedy is threading on weak …,full of people. The reviews were cruel with this movie,accusing it of being a vehicle for Benigni …if you were looking for something comical in nature. This movie unfolds at its own pace,starting [...]