As I sit down to write the last paper of my undergraduate career, I am faced with a rather difficult task, for it is hard to write a paper dissecting a work who's primary impact is emotional, and whose impact on me personally has been so strong. My first reaction to seeing Roberto Benigni's moving film, Life is Beautiful, was that this film was the epitome of everything I love about movies: It is a work that transported me into another world and shed light on a certain deep truth, and it did this not with the communication of abstract ideas, but by involving me in this other world emotionally.

However, Benigni's own task in making this film was much greater.* He took a tremendous risk, making a "comedy about the holocaust," and the fact that he pulled it off so well, despite the expected controversy it has aroused in some, is downright miraculous. So what I would like to do is use this paper as an opportunity to explore the reasons that this film works so well for some and not for others, and I would like to do so using Heidegger's conception of "the one" and "resolute action" and Kierkegaard's "unconditional commitment" and "teleological suspension of the ethical". I think these categories will allow us to understand the nature of the story told and discover why the film was so loved by some and almost unintelligible to others.

We can divide the film's plot structure into two parts. The first half of Life is Beautiful is basically a slapstick comedy much like Benigni's earlier films. It tells of two friends who move to "the city" (somewhere in Tuscany) and we follow Guido (played by Benigni) as he falls in love with a school teacher (played by Benigni's real wife, Nicoletta Braschi.) The setting is pre World War II Italy, and the fascists are in rule, but the inconveniences that result from this are nothing more than a backdrop for Benigni's gags. When he finally succeeds in wooing the school teacher and marrying her, the film jumps forward six years to 1944, when the war is going on full swing, and the racism shown toward Benigni, who was until then a fully integrated Jew, becomes more apparent.

The couple now has a small son, and in the second half of the film, the entire family is hauled off to a concentration camp in Germany. There, Benigni invents an elaborate ploy to hide what is going on from his son, telling him that it is all a big game, and whoever is first to get 1000 points will win a real tank. At the end of the film, Benigni's character is shot and killed, but the war has ended with the arrival of the Americans, and the son and mother survive.

I will argue that the story Benigni tells is of someone who achieves authenticity by escaping the identities and ethical rules provided by "the one". He does this first by establishing an identity for himself (in a Heideggerian sense) as "pursuer of Dora" and then by getting into a full blown unconditional commitment (in the Kierkegaardian sense)--to lessening the suffering of his son in the concentration camps. Throughout, both the for-the-sake-of-whichs provided by the conquest of his wife and the unconditional commitment to saving his son allow him to respond to the particular Situation and act resolutely.

Hubert Dreyfus explains in his commentary on Being and Time that the for Kierkegaard, "human beings sin when they succumb to the temptation to flee anxiety by choosing "safe" spheres of existence. In Heidegger's account...Dasein can succumb to the temptation actively to embrace the distracting social practices of the public in order to flee anxiety...thereby Dasein becomes a one-self, which presumably means making oneself at home in the world and using the social for-the-sake-of-whichs to gain a pseudo identity."

We see from the beginning that Benigni has a low regard for the types of pseudo identities provided by the one. He ridicules these identities repeatedly in the first half of the film, in part by making them interchangeable. At the start, Benigni is mistaken for the king of Italy as his and his friend's car loses control and accidentally ends up in a parade. He is constantly switching hats (i.e. switching roles, if we see wearing a hat as wearing an identity, so to speak) with a fascist employer of his. When the prefect arrives from Rome, Benigni assumes his identity to go and speak to the local school where the girl he is falling in love with works. Here, he ridicules the notion of identity by race, as he illustrates to the students the absurdity of Aryan superiority. Finally, when his son asks why a certain pastry shop does not allow Jews or dogs, Guido tells his son that these classifications are completely arbitrary, and that there are stores in town that forbid entry to Chinese and kangaroos, Spaniards and horses, and that tomorrow, they can put a sign outside their book shop barring Visigoths and spiders. All these examples show, first, that Guido has no fixed identity himself (most importantly, he places no importance in his being Jewish,) and second, that he doesn't take any of the identities provided by the one seriously in others.

However, Guido does have enough respect for the rules provided by the one to keep his actions intelligible. We see this first when he and his friend arrive in the "big city." Guido explains that now that they are in the city they have absolute freedom. When his friend starts screaming uncontrollably (to test this freedom,) Guido says, "you can't just do whatever you want, we're in the city now." Thus we have this paradox of seeming freedom restricted by the bounds of intelligibility (screaming in the middle of the square being an unintelligible action.) More importantly though, we see Guido's respect for the one in his observation of the rules of being a waiter. He learns them carefully from his uncle, who takes the role of waiter very seriously,* and he does his job well, if somewhat playfully.

Guido, before his commitment, is in the state Heidegger calls "undifferentiated." He takes up the practices handed to him by the one, he exists within the world of the one, but he does so in a playful, unattached way that allows him the necessary openness and receptivity to take up an identity when the opportunity presents itself.

This opportunity comes in the form of a woman who literally "falls out of the sky" and into his hands. Guido is at a farm, and Dora, the school teacher who will later be his wife, falls out of the second story of a barn and he happens to be underneath to catch her. All of their subsequent meetings happen by chance and they comment on this repeatedly. When Guido starts to actively pursue her and she points this out, he insists that this is something happening to him, not something he is willing. "When are you going to leave me alone?" he asks. "First, you show up everywhere, falling out of the sky, etc. and now you even show up in my dreams." Thus, Benigni strikes a delicate balance between willfully pursuing someone and their magically, unexplainedly showing up for him.

Now that Guido has the goal of wooing Dora, and she seems a possibility for him, he starts to respond successfully to particular situations. Although before meeting her he was actively engaged in the world, things didn't always go so smoothly: He never succeeds in stealing the hat, he accidentally knocks a pot onto the Dora's fiancé's head (he doesn't know she is engaged though,) he accidentally places his eggs in the hat that this man will put on, etc.

When he is with Dora though, he is completely in tune with the situation and nothing ever goes wrong. Suddenly his timing is perfect, and all the accidents from before come back to help him in this responsiveness. For example, she mentions that it is not hard to find the "key" to her heart, and they happen to be standing in a spot where a man always calls his wife for the door key. Whereas before the key always fell on Guido's head, he now seizes the opportunity to have the key "magically" fall out of the sky when he asks for it. Similarly, he sees the German officer with whom he always exchanges riddles and he uses the fact that he will come and give the answer to the riddle to answer a question he poses to Dora.

These situations are hard to explain in writing, but the point is that when Guido is with Dora, he is open to every unique situation. Objects acquire new uses (e.g. the steering wheel as an umbrella, the tapestry as a red carpet,) and everything starts to be seen in terms of the for-the-sake-of-whichs provided by his goal of wooing Dora. Heidegger says that "The essence of resoluteness lies in the opening of human Dasein into the clearing of being, and not at all in a storing up of energy for 'action'" What all these situations have in common is that they all are examples of Guido's openness, and not of his action.

It is interesting to note that although Guido never breaks down in the face of death later in the film, he does so only once--when the relationship with Dora seems an absolute impossibility. When he finds out she is going to marry someone else, he is suddenly completely disoriented and cannot cope with even the simplest things. He drops all the pastries he is carrying twice, and he cannot find his way into the kitchen. "Mi sono spistato tutto (literally "I have been completely "de-pathed")" he says to his uncle, meaning, he has lost all direction, he has lost his "path". Once Dora makes it clear that it is him she wants, then Guido gets back on course and starts responding again, namely by taking his uncle's horse and kidnapping Dora at her wedding party.

While Guido is responding to particular situations, the rest of the world can only interpret events as the "one" does. In this case the one is particularly strong, with the prevailing fascist movement, and even when Guido comes in with the horse, the other guests are unable to realize what is going on, and they see it all as "part of the show." One man stands and salutes the horse, while there is general applause at Dora's exit. In other words, the unintelligible is forced into intelligibility by the one. Heidegger says that "for the "one", however, the Situation [i.e. the specific, concrete situation] is essentially something that has been closed off. The "one" knows only the 'general situation', loses itself in those 'opportunities' which are closest to it, and pays Dasein's way by a reckoning up of 'accidents' which it fails to recognize, deems its own achievement, and passes off as such."

Kierkegaard also talks about the one's (in his case "the public's") tendency to level all action and therefore make it intelligible. It may seem I'm making to much of this one detail, but I think that this closing scene of the first half of the film is a final statement on Benigni's part about the fascists' inability to cope with an individual's goals. Kierkegaard says, "It is a simple enough matter to level the whole of existence to the idea of the State or to a concept of society [a primary tenet of fascism]...for in this way one does not come to the paradox at all, to the single individual's as such being higher than the universal." In the first half of La Vita e Bella, we see just such a world, with Benigni providing a sharp contrast with a world set on understanding everything in terms of the State rather than the individual, and all identities being fixed by the one except his own.

We also see this type of leveling and generalizing interpretation when we look at negative reactions to the film itself. I will have more to say about this later, but critics who have tried to understand this film as a "film about the holocaust" or about "Italy's role in WWII" have entirely missed the point because they are unable to get in tune with Guido's individuality and his authentic way of responding to situations in terms of his relation to his wife and then to his son. The SF Weekly, for example, said the following in its negative review of the film: "Benigni's non realistic depiction of the camps will upset plenty of moviegoers, but his fantasy that the Italians were hapless victims of the Nazis rather than collaborators is far more offensive."

I have purposely avoided any talk of unconditional commitments for the second half of the film, for although I think that Guido's pursuit of Dora gives him the necessary for-the-sake-of-whichs to act resolutely, I'm not sure that he has an unconditional commitment for her. We might be able to say that Guido in the first part of the film is in Religiousness A, an authentic state that allows for "an empty, open, spontaneous way of being-in-the-world." Although we have seen that the pursuit of Dora gives a direction to Guido's life, and although maybe this direction verges on an unconditional commitment, Guido does not display the faith in the absurd Kierkegaard associates with one who has such a commitment until the second half of the film, when Guido unquestionably commits himself at all costs to easing the suffering of his son in the concentration camp. Also, the fact that his identity is able to change so quickly from "lover of Dora," to "savior of Giosue," shows that his commitment to Dora may not have been unconditional.

Dreyfus says that "resolute openness may sometimes require short-term, Zen-like spontaneity [Guido before he meets Dora?] In our culture, however, resolute openness normally finds that the Situation calls for the determined, steady pursuit of a long-term project [marrying Dora.] Since Dasein is thrown into a Christian culture in which life and death commitments are possible, it may find itself drawn into...a life that looks exactly like that of a Knight of Faith [Guido in the concentration camp.]"

This commitment of Guido's has three features essential to understanding the motivation behind the film. First, Guido continues to respond to the particular situations that present themselves, and this explains why this is not, strictly speaking, a film about the holocaust. A good example of this continued responsiveness is Guido's incredibly quick "translation" of the German officers rules to adapt to the story he has invented for his son.

Second, the necessary faith that comes with such a commitment explains his never despairing at the sight of so much suffering around him (I say this because a friend of mine said she didn't like the film "because it was unrealistic, the way he never breaks down.") Kierkegaard says that the Knight of Faith who is in an unconditional commitment must have a certain absurd faith that what he is doing will work and, more important, he should have faith that he should be in this commitment despite all the risk it entails ("Abraham had faith and did not doubt. He believed the ridiculous. ) Guido displays this faith throughout the second half of the film and the idea that his son has the possibility of surviving on the last night allows Guido to march to his own death without losing his identity and therefore without falling into despair. Kierkegaard says that "it is human to complain, human to weep with one who weeps, but it is greater to have faith and more blessed to behold the believer." Guido does not weep because he believes, absurdly, that he will succeed in helping his son even though he has no real reason to believe either of them will survive. His faith is not in some future salvation but in the present moment.

Third, and most importantly, Guido's commitment allows him to "suspend the ethical", in Kierkegaard's words, for the higher cause of easing his son's suffering. He is no longer bound by the ethical principle of always telling the truth. Before trying to explain this, I should point out that Kierkegaard says, when talking about Abraham's situation, that it cannot be fully explained since, the moment one tries to explain something one has to rest on generalities. "Abraham cannot be mediated, which can also be put by saying he cannot speak. The moment I speak I express the universal, and when I do not no one can understand me." He also says, "One speaks in Abraham's honor, but how? By making it commonplace: 'his greatness was that he so loved God that he was willing to offer him the best he had."

We can, however, begin by trying to understand how not to see Guido's, and consequently Benigni's, position. The one could interpret the film as follows: one could say Guido is a liar, he makes up a story just to hide the truth from his son; he shows an insensitivity to those around him, and all this shows that Benigni was insensitive to those who suffered and died in the holocaust. He paints an unrealistic picture of the atrocities committed by the Germans in WWII, and the whole film is a big set up to make himself look good.

Guido does not lie for the sake of lying, but because it is the best and only way to achieve his ultimate goal, to which everything else is secondary. He is not insensitive to the others; he does not seek their help in his ploy, nor does he try to convince them that they should have a different attitude or that what he is doing is the "right thing to do." He need not explain his action to the others because they are simply in a different world. Kierkegaard says that "Abraham's action stands in no relation to the universal, it is a purely private undertaking."

And the film itself, in the second half, is about this private undertaking. Benigni need not, and indeed cannot, "explain" his characters actions to one who does not understand them. Instead, he invites us (those who are willing to involve ourselves) into a world where individual love prevails in the worst possible surroundings, a world where faith saves one from despair. And the film works because we can see that Benigni himself made this film with love and a certain faith that it would be understood.

Benigni also warn against a society that does not allow individual commitments and identities and the resolute action that this allows. We see this explicitly when the German doctor who was Guido's friend at the Grand Hotel seems to be going mad. Guido thinks the doctor will be able to help him, but really its the doctor who needs help. He is stuck in a world that leaves no room for individuality and this drives him crazy. Instead of helping Guido he asks him to help him discover the answer to some absurd riddle, ending with "Help me Guido. I'm unable to sleep at night."