Life is Beautiful: A Clown Goes to the Camps

Life is Beautiful:
A Clown Goes to the Camps

Rabbi Michael L Feshbach

Temple Beth Am, Williamsville, NY

The king of Egypt spoke to the Hebrew midwives... saying: ‘When you deliver the Hebrew women, look at the birth stool if it is a boy, kill him if it is a girl let her live."

The edict came down from on high. It wasn't meant as advice. It wasn't a suggestion, like, for instance, the city of Boston kindly suggests that you at least slow down and look before hurling through that red light. No, this was an order, a command, right from the mouth of the man whose word was law.

And yet, incredibly, in sparse words that speak volumes, we read: vatirena hamyaldot et haElohim, v'lo asu k'asher dibber aleiheim melech Mitzrayim, vat'chayenah et hay'ladim. The midwives feared God, and did not do as the king of Egypt had told them They let the boys live."

Here we have, in a single sentence, the first recorded act of civil disobedience, the first time in world literature when someone stood up to a great leader and said, simply, no. These words have moved and inspired a Rosa Parks and Natan Sharansky; they have been a source of hope and solace for victims of Apartheid and Prisoners of Conscience.

But the defiance in what these women did is even more powerful than a political statement.  It’s a lesson for all of us, at every juncture in our lives.  It is a reminder that we don't have to live by the rules that other people set for us. Even laws -but not only laws, rather, each and every situation in which we find ourselves requires our consent to move forward, to affirm its hold over our lives. And have it in our hands to withhold that consent.  Ultimately, existentially, we make, we shape our own reality.  In the end we are, indeed, the authors of ourselves.

This pretty serious idea is the central premise of Roberto Benigni's Life is Beautiful, a recently released Italian comedy about the Holocaust.

The film was a surprise, coming from Benigni who, at 45, is probably Europe’s best known comic actor, a modem­ day disciple of Charlie Chaplin. But the film is all his: he is the inspiration, co-author, and star, and he pulls off an almost miraculous cinematic balancing act.

The movie opens in the Tuscan town of Arezzo, in Fascist Italy, in the 1930s. Daniel Kotzin, in The Jerusalem Report, describes the main character, Guido, as a ''happy go lucky fellow apparently oblivious to the major events unfolding around him," who arrives from the country, works as a waiter in his Uncle's restaurant, and dreams of opening a book store. He meets, enchants and finally wins the heart of Dora, a non-Jewish school teacher played by Benigni's wife, Nicolleta Braschi The first section of the movie is... truly funny. Just on this side of slapstick, evoking laughter but stopping short of scorn, the events in the night following Guido's "rescuing" of Dora from her own engagement party are amongst the fumiest five minutes I have ever seen in on the screen.

Time turns, and so, we would have expected, would the mood. Years later, and Guido and Dora prepare for their son, Giosue (Joshua)'s, fifth birthday party. The celebration is inte1rnpted by the deportation of rather and son. Dora, told to go back home and forget about her family, demands to climb on the same train, and willingly travels to the unnamed death camp that is their destination.

And it is here, on the train ride that the film travels to brilliant but dangerous ground. For Guido had always tried to make his son happy, and he seems to believe it his mission in life to continue to do so Joshua asks what is going on. The bewildered son looks to a rather with those eyes that say, "Papa, I know you know everything in the world. Make sense of this for me..."

Guido, rather than succumbing to his own despair, rather than racing that moment that every parent must, of letting their children know that they are not, after all, omnipotent and omniscient, Guido improvises ...and tells Joshua that it was all planned ...as part of his birthday celebration. He builds on the charade as he goes, describing the entire experience as a game and, when a Nazi officer bursts into a barracks and asks for a translator, Guido, knowing absolutely no German, volunteers, imitating the soldier's style but making up the content as he goes along -- outlining the rules of this very elaborate game to a wide-eyed and incredulous five year old boy... and a bemused but exhausted barracks full of other adult men. The prize at the end is a tank. You need so many points. You gain points by staying quiet and hidden. You lose points for crying. And so on.

Now, even with a bare bones summary, I know what you are thinking: a comedy about the Holocaust! How... tacky is the mildest word I can think of It brings to mind visions of The Great Dictator, Jack Benny's To Be or Not To Be, even Mel Brook's :film about a comedy about the Holocaust, The Producers. (Who can forget "Springtime for Hitler in Germany?'  It even, God help us, calls to mind Hogan's Heroes.

As offensive as all of these previous efforts were to some, however, even they were about the Nazis... as Germans among Germans. They were comedies, they were often inappropriate, but even they were not about the death camps! How could anyone make such a film? How dare touch hell with humor?

And the objections have been loud, indeed. Pressure mounted on Benigni in Europe not to make the :film at all; at the Jerusalem premiere, one member of the audience ''bitterly accused Benigni of being more dangerous than the Holocaust denier -- for daring to bring laughter into a death camp, prompting modem audiences to ridicule Jews and downplay Nazi genocide."(Kotzin)

In addition: Roberto Benigni? Tackling a serious subject? Here is a man who jumped into the arms of and kissed the presenter as Life is Beautiful won the runner-up Grand Prize at this year's Cannes Film Festival who told his Jerusalem audience that he wanted to make love to each and every one of them, but that, sadly, time constraints prevented it (Kotzin).

The well-known actor's answer to the critics is poignant. ''I received a lot of letters from children," he said. ''I am really Benigni in the film, and children identified with me. They ask their parents: 'Why did they take Benigni? The parents can only answer by saying that he is Jewish [the character, that is]. So, the children ask, 'What does it mean to be Jewish?"'

I agree. This is one of the most powerful films about the Holocaust I have ever seen. It was, perhaps, one of the most powerful :films I have ever seen. I hesitate to say that, because I know that when you build something up too much, it's often a disappointment. But, hey, I haven't gotten to see too many movies at all since my children were born this one and, of course, the new Star Trek movie, so you can put my comments in perspective. But that was my reaction on leaving the theater.

Throughout, Life is Beautiful walks a tightrope, risking falling into farce. My wife thought the translation scene with the Nazi officer crossed the line, but we later learned this was a tribute to a scene from The Great Dictator (which, by the way, Chaplin later said he would never have made had he known what he knew after the war).

To use a colloquial expression, Life is Beautiful blew me away, and on several levels.  First, as a father of two boys. You know, we say that we don't have to be in a situation to understand it, to "relate." People can help each other even through things they have not themselves experienced. I have met Catholic priests who are pretty good marriage counselors.

I really believe that. But I still don't think I would have reacted the same way before my boys were born This is a story about a father and a son. And when I shook with silent sobs, it was not this fictional Joshua, but a real-Life Benjamin and Daniel in my heart.

Second, as a Jew I was amazed at how sensitively a non-Jewish author portrayed a Jewish experience (thus proving my initial inclination above). Benigni said he was inspired to make this movie because of his own father’s time in a Nazi labor camp -- but then went on to make it clear that he absolutely understood the distinction between a concentration camp where death was accidental and a death camp, where it was the main product.

Too few non-Jews know that distinction; too few really understand the difference between what Jews went through and, for example, Polish prisoners of war or other political prisoners. As a Jew, I was moved by how Guido, outwardly assimilated, who thought of himself as Italian, was seen as a Jew first by his Italian neighbors... a chilling and entirely accurate reminder that we are bound together in past, present and future in ways we often seek to evade but, well cannot. And as a Jew, I was touched by the portrayal of one man who rocked the fascists and Nazis, but who was swept up in their hatred... a reminder that ridicule may be a right response ... since those who are puffed up with themselves really are ridiculous... this ridicule of our enemies may be true, but it is not always that effective.

And finally, as a human being The most bone-chilling encounter in the entire film, for me, was when Guido recognizes a German doctor in the camp, with whom he had so recently spent time sharing and solving mind-teaser puzzles.  I can't tell you what happens here without spoiling it, but I thought Benigni had a lot to say about human nature, about... compartmentalizing Life... and about the way we want what we want when we want it... in his portrayal of this relationship.

What is art?  It is the act of holding a part of the human experience up to a lens, or beneath a microscope.  It is examination, and exposure.  Of looking at something in a new way Life is Beautiful is a powerful, indeed, a profolll1d piece of art.  It says, most of all, that even hell is a choice that there can be laughter, even there.

It is a fable.  It was not meant to be literal but it tells a tale both worth it and well go see it, before it's gone.

In this week's Torah portion, Pharaoh speaks to the 'm'yaldot ha'ivriyot,' to ''the Hebrew midwives." Who are they?  Are these Egyptian women, who work amongst the Jews?  Or are they Hebrews themselves, as our later tradition claim;, who Pharaoh somehow thought would have obeyed such an order?  The Hebrew is ambiguous.  And the effect is incredible.

For who are you? And who are we? With whom do we identify -- and why? And how?

During the High Holy Days a year ago, I quoted Rabbi Lawrence Kushner's observations about a computer game called Myst. The players are dropped in the middle of a world, with no explanations, no guidance, and no rules. You have to figure out what is going on.

We are dropped into the middle of a game. There is plenty of guidance, and plenty of explanations and plenty of rules.  They all come from other people.

No one tells you that you have a choice No one tells you that the goal of the game is to decide much rules to embrace, and call your own and that in doing so, you will define...who you are.

Do that in a movie theater. And you mu remember... that the choice is yours.  And that that is what you can do... through Jewish life as -well.