Roberto Benigni comes back with a film which allows him to be the comical character we love the most.
Attilio is a poetry teacher, deeply in love with Vittoria -who doesn't share instead the same feelings. She goes to Iraq to work with Fuad, the major Arab poet. In Baghdad, war has just begun and Vittoria is wounded during an attack. When Attilio knows that, he goes there to assist her and to look for the medicines she needs to recover. Many times he risks his own life...
"Pinocchio", Benigni's previous movie, was an "incident". It was an attempt to adapt the Carlo Collodi fairy tale, very artificial and bombastic.
Here the actor chooses a contemporary fact (the Iraq war) to tell a story of love and poetry. Benigni comes back working on self-written material -in such cases he always gets the best results.
Like "La vita è bella" (his most famous and still unbeatable film) this is a story of human relationships in a sad context (the war, as I said). At the same time Benigni doesn't do the same film, he doesn't want to repeat the same concept of laughs and crying. He manages to treat again the theme of surviving but in a different way, he doesn't recreate the same situations of his Oscar-winner picture.
In Italy many people criticized "La tigre e la neve" because it doesn't express a strong opinion against the war. To me it's not true at all: the film IS against the war. There are many examples in the movie which illustrate that (the difficulty of living in Baghdad now, the hospital scenes and the suicide of Fuad). Of course, Benigni's aim was not to show blood and tragedies all the time, because the context itself is tragic. The movie shows how you can fight for the person and the things you love the most, even in a such difficult situation as war.
We laugh often also in this film, but behind Benigni's humor there's more seriousness and maturity. Until 10 years ago we were used to start laughing from the beginning to the end of a Benigni picture; from "La vita è bella" on we saw a change in him -laughs with a more serious approach. Benigni is not a simple clown any more.
All the actors are excellent -Roberto Benigni, his wife Nicoletta Braschi (more beautiful than ever) and Jean Reno (he is the deep Fuad).
Cinematography is very good and the music of Nicola Piovani as well -as always...! We see also in a small participation long time Benigni's friend Tom Waits -he sings in the marriage scene a beautiful song written especially for this movie.
Attilio is a poetry teacher, deeply in love with Vittoria -who doesn't share instead the same feelings. She goes to Iraq to work with Fuad, the major Arab poet. In Baghdad, war has just begun and Vittoria is wounded during an attack. When Attilio knows that, he goes there to assist her and to look for the medicines she needs to recover. Many times he risks his own life...
"Pinocchio", Benigni's previous movie, was an "incident". It was an attempt to adapt the Carlo Collodi fairy tale, very artificial and bombastic.
Here the actor chooses a contemporary fact (the Iraq war) to tell a story of love and poetry. Benigni comes back working on self-written material -in such cases he always gets the best results.
Like "La vita è bella" (his most famous and still unbeatable film) this is a story of human relationships in a sad context (the war, as I said). At the same time Benigni doesn't do the same film, he doesn't want to repeat the same concept of laughs and crying. He manages to treat again the theme of surviving but in a different way, he doesn't recreate the same situations of his Oscar-winner picture.
In Italy many people criticized "La tigre e la neve" because it doesn't express a strong opinion against the war. To me it's not true at all: the film IS against the war. There are many examples in the movie which illustrate that (the difficulty of living in Baghdad now, the hospital scenes and the suicide of Fuad). Of course, Benigni's aim was not to show blood and tragedies all the time, because the context itself is tragic. The movie shows how you can fight for the person and the things you love the most, even in a such difficult situation as war.
We laugh often also in this film, but behind Benigni's humor there's more seriousness and maturity. Until 10 years ago we were used to start laughing from the beginning to the end of a Benigni picture; from "La vita è bella" on we saw a change in him -laughs with a more serious approach. Benigni is not a simple clown any more.
All the actors are excellent -Roberto Benigni, his wife Nicoletta Braschi (more beautiful than ever) and Jean Reno (he is the deep Fuad).
Cinematography is very good and the music of Nicola Piovani as well -as always...! We see also in a small participation long time Benigni's friend Tom Waits -he sings in the marriage scene a beautiful song written especially for this movie.