Y EA RS C EL EB RA TI NG 6 PW AA -TA ST IC YE AR FILM S! FILM WALL-E A World
Transformed II: AUTHOR World in Flux Emily Paul
2 0 1 2 EDITOR Tania Asnes
ALPACA-IN-CHIEF Daniel Berdichevsky
the World Scholar’s Cup ®
® FILM RESOURCE | 1
Film Resource
2012: A World in Flux
Table of Contents
Preface: Lights, Camera, Look Out! ...... 2 Influences ...... 17 I. Pixar: To Infinity and 3D ...... 4 The Beautiful Life of Life Is Beautiful ...... 17 Objectives ...... 4 VI. Characters in Life Is Beautiful ...... 18 Pixar’s Story ...... 3 Objectives ...... 18 A113 ...... 5 Guido...... 18 The Key(frame) to Good Storytelling ...... 5 Dora ...... 18 II. ‘Bots and BNL Customers: Characters in Wall E ...... 7 Joshua ...... 19 Objectives ...... 7 Eliseo ...... 19 The Basics of Character ...... 7 Dr. Lessing ...... 19 Wall E ...... 7 VII. La Vita è Organized: Plot and Structure ...... 20 Eva ...... 8 Objectives ...... 20 The Captain ...... 8 Act One ...... 20 Auto ...... 8 Act Two ...... 21 III. Robots in Love: Wall E ‘s Plot and Structure ...... 9 Midpoint...... 21 Objectives ...... 9 Act Two Continued ...... 22 Act One ...... 9 Act Three ...... 22 Act Two ...... 10 VIII. Horror and Humor: Themes of Life Is Beautiful ...... 23 Midpoint (where the film changes direction) ...... 10 Objectives ...... 23 Act Two, Continued ...... 11 Inconceivable! ...... 23 Act Three ...... 11 Silence and Goodness as Power ...... 24 IV. Trash, Robots, and Love: Themes of Wall E ...... 12 Life Is Beautiful and Funny—Against all Odds ...... 25 Objectives ...... 12 The Trickster ...... 25 Robots Are People, Too ...... 12 Once Upon a Time ...... 26 Future Friending ...... 13 Arrivederci ...... 27 Trash Planet ...... 14 Works Consulted ...... 28 Love and Compromise ...... 15 About the Author ...... 29 V. Producing Life is Beautiful : From the Circus to the Oscar...... 16 About the Editor ...... 29 Objectives ...... 16 About the Alpaca-in-Chief ...... 29 Influences ...... 16
by Emily Paul New York University B.A. ‘03 New York University TischAsia M.A. ‘11
edited by Tania Asnes Barnard College B.A. ‘05
Dedicated to the Robot Alpaca Project at the University of Cuzco.
DemiDec and The World Scholar’s Cup are registered trademarks of the DemiDec Corporation. FILM RESOURCE | 2 Preface: Lights, Camera, Look Out!
In 1895, a French audience sat down in the dark to watch one of the very first movies, The Arrival of a Train at La Ciotat Station . Directors Auguste and Louis Lumière 1 hoped to thrill audiences by capturing a moving train headed towards the camera. As legend tells it, the thrill was too much. People feared the train was real— and fled the theater.
Once audiences overcame their fear, they craved more action and adventure. They wanted movies to take them from the depths of the sea to the heights of the moon. Technology developed rapidly to keep up with audiences’ appetites. The first feature length “talkies” (movies with sound) hit theatres in 1927. Snow White , the first animated feature film, followed it in 1937. In 1940, studios solved the problem of showing actors in imaginary places—such as flying through space. They realized they could film actors in a studio against a blue or green screen and later replace the screens with any background they desired. 2
Our appetites for entertainment and innovation keep growing, and today companies like Pixar continue breaking new movie-making ground (and their budgets) to satisfy them.
Films are sometimes set in the future—and, more often than you would expect, they even predict it. In 1968, 2001: A Space Odyssey imagined an artificially intelligent computer, HAL, with a vocal interface 3. Apple added Siri, a vocal interface with substantial artificial intelligence 4, to its popular iPhone—putting HAL-like interactions in the hands of millions. Also in the 1960s, Star Trek foresaw 5 mobile phones and interracial kissing. Today, you probably have a better mobile phone than did Captain Kirk 6.
Films also document the past. United 93 (2006) captured memories and perceptions of what 9/11 was like in America. Life, Above All (2010) brought audiences into the heart of the ongoing AIDS crisis in South Africa. Gandhi (1982) embodied the life of India’s great 20 th century leader. From Hollywood to Bollywood, movies make us laugh, cry, wonder, and eat popcorn.
1 But not Mrs. Potts. 2 Also called “chroma keying,” this technique is common in TV weather forecasts. That big map the weather man is always pointing at—it’s not actually there. 3 And a full measure of murderous rage. 4 But not as much murderous rage (as yet). 5 It did less well with the blue-skinned aliens. 6 This resource will not speculate as to your interracial kissing. FILM RESOURCE | 3
The two films we will explore each fit into one of these categories. Wall E (2008) is at the cutting edge of animation, and uses the trademark storytelling tools and styles of Hollywood , the mainstream film industry of the United States. It looks toward a future in which the world is a wreck and robots have lives of their own. Life Is Beautiful (1997) is a product of Italy. 7 This film’s writer, director, and lead actor is a physical comedian , informed by the traditions of theater as well as by great Italian directors of the past. It borrows Italian filmmaking traditions to comment on the country’s experience of World War II.
Though set in the future and the past, Wall E and Life Is Beautiful also cast a light on the present day. They hint at truths about society that remain constant even as the world changes.
Emily Paul
7 So is pizza margherita. If you’re ever in Naples, don’t miss out on yummy pizza margherita! FILM RESOURCE | 4 I. Pixar: To Infinity and 3D
A famous African 8 proverb states, “It takes a whole village to raise a child.” When your child is a feature film, it takes a director, a room full of writers, and countless animators and editors. 9 When your child is a Pixar film, it takes a revolution. We can enjoy and study Wall E today (not to mention laugh at the antics of a certain green ogre 10 ) because the visionaries of Pixar have reimagined (and reinvented!) animation over the last twenty years.
Objectives
By the time you complete this chapter, you should be able to answer the following questions.
Which key players contributed to the computer animation revolution?
How did Wall E’s creative team members prepare for their career at Pixar?
How has Pixar changed animation?
When You Wish Upon a Pixar
Before Buzz Lightyear first soared to infinity and beyond, most animators doubted the value of computerized animation. They believed animation was too nuanced to be done by computers—that computer-animated characters could not express emotions the way hand- drawn ones could. Computer animation was fine for spaceships and special effects, but not for the characters at the heart of a film.
In the 1970s, computer scientist Ed Catmull faced a long battle to prove otherwise. He assembled a group of talented researchers who shared his vision. Moving from the New York Institute of Technology to Lucasfilm (a production company founded by Star Wars producer George Lucas) and, finally, to a spin-off named Pixar, the group and its goal remained constant.
Catmull and his team made a series of breakthroughs in imaging technology, including computer painting and texture mapping, but they knew they needed more than technology to make computer- animated feature films. They needed artists who knew how to tell a story.
Enter a great storyteller, John Lasseter . Lasseter used Pixar’s technology to develop computer- animated short films. Not only were his films technological breakthroughs, but they told strong stories. Soon, his films earned accolades like the 1989 Academy Award for Best Short Film, leading to
8 And favorite Hillary Clinton. 9 And interns to bring them all coffee. 10 Shrek (2001) was not a Pixar film. But it was certainly inspired by Pixar’s new approach to animation. FILM RESOURCE | 5 a distribution deal with Disney. Pixar was to make three computer-animated feature films, which Disney would market and distribute.
Toy Story , the first 3D computer-animated Watch it on YouTube feature film, premiered on July 22, 1995. Not only did the quality of animation John Lasseter’s first computer-animated film with the team at Pixar: silence the naysayers, but Toy Story soon http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Taq9LFbcvxE surpassed Disney’s The Lion King as the world’s highest-grossing animated film. Catmull’s dream had come true.
A113
Wall E’s writer/director Andrew Stanton trained as an animator at the California Institute of the Arts (“CalArts” for short) before being hired as a writer on the TV cartoon Mighty Mouse, the New Adventures 11 . Pixar hired Stanton and another animator, Pete Docter 12 , in the early 1990s to help make computer-animated commercials. 13
Three writers are credited for Wall E’ s screenplay: Stanton, Docter and Jim Reardon . Reardon worked with Stanton on Mighty Mouse before going on to direct more than 30 episodes of The Simpsons , a show you will be studying in this year’s music guide.
CalArts was an animator factory; each year, Disney and Pixar (and their less-acclaimed rivals) hired animators upon their graduation. Freshman year at CalArts, everyone took a rigorous, rudimentary animation class in a windowless room named A113—including Stanton, Docter and Reardon. As a tribute to this shared experience, “A113” has found its way into every Pixar feature film. In Wall E, it is the secret code ordering Auto not to return to Earth. 14
The Key(frame) to Good Storytelling
At Disney, an animator is assigned a Mini-Directed Research Area: Pixar character, for which he or she draws the keyframes for an entire film. Now part of the Walt Disney Company, Disney Lasseter launched a new approach at Where and how was Pixar launched? Pixar, in which animators are How did Steve Jobs become involved with Pixar? assigned individual shots—called How are Pixar movies made? Be sure to check out keyframes —rather than characters www.pixar.com/howwedoit/index.html . they follow for the entire film. Read about the unofficial Pixar motto. A keyframe is an image of a character How and when did Pixar become part of the Walt Disney Company? in a certain position 15 . In traditional hand-drawn animation, a junior animator draws the frames between the keyframes, which make the
11 “Here he comes to save the day! And he will prove that crime will never pay!” 12 Later the director of Monsters, Inc. and Up . 13 The mouthwash Listerine and candy Life Savers were clients. 14 Animators like to encode inside jokes into their work. Reportedly, every episode of South Park includes an alien visitor. 15 For instance, Taz the Tasmanian devil in mid-spin, tongue hovering 6 inches out of his mouth. FILM RESOURCE | 6 character seem to move realistically onscreen. In computer animation, the computer creates those in- between frames automatically 16 .
Computer animators can modify keyframes by manipulating avars. Avars are the digital equivalent of all the miniscule muscles in our body that, engaged in different combinations, allow us to move. Pixar animators typically program at least a hundred avars onto a character’s face alone.
Each element of a scene, from the Watch it on YouTube characters to the background and lighting, must be created separately. The process of Andrew Stanton is interviewed about Wall E: consolidating these elements into one http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=85Sc92fzOiU frame is called “rendering.” It takes extraordinary computing power to render, so Pixar has over 5,000 computer processors on site—in what they call their “ render farm 17 .”
Pixar has succeeded, however, not because it renders great animation. It renders great stories.
16 Junior animators, you have been made obsolete. 17 And on that farm they had an intergalactic robot, E-I-E-I-O. FILM RESOURCE | 7 II. ‘Bots and BNL Customers: Characters in Wall E
Perhaps the Borg 18 would be less inclined to destroy human civilization if they could fall in love with some Borgettes . When we compare a person to a robot, we mean he or she is unable to think independently or creatively. Wall E and Eva, on the other hand, are robots that we might be tempted, on some level, to call people. Despite their programmed directives, they change in order to make each other (and thus themselves) happy 19 . In some ways, they are more human than the humans in Wall E20 . In this chapter, we enter a world in which humanity has devolved to become antisocial, while robots long for each other’s company.
Objectives
By the time you complete this chapter, you should be able to answer the following questions.
What are the leading traits of each character? What is each character’s story purpose? Why does Auto have no friends?
The Basics of Character
Andrew Stanton, along with other leading writers at Pixar, has said that Robert McKee ’s guidance informs his screenplays. McKee is one of many popular screenwriting gurus. One of his suggestions to beginning writers: to list the adjectives that describe a given character’s behavior. Each character, he says, should be assigned a leading trait .
A film’s characters are driven by their goals and desires, termed their “ story purposes .” Many writers are taught story purposes must be simple, so that an audience to identify with them more easily. Wall E has one of the most adorable story purposes ever: to hold hands with Eva.
Wall E Wall E is a robot trash compactor living alone on an abandoned Earth. That might be boring for most creatures, but not for Wall E. He is playful. He loves to dance, and finds wonder in the smallest things—a quality that has probably kept him functioning. Every other Wall E robot on Earth has long since stopped working.
18 The Borg are a powerful cyborg species in the Star Trek universe. Their story purpose was to assimilate. 19 As Barbara Streisand might have sung, “Robots who need robots are the luckiest robots in the world.” 20 They are certainly in better shape. FILM RESOURCE | 8
Wall E watches and listens to music from the 1969 movie musical Hello, Dolly! to combat his loneliness. He is fixated on a scene in which the characters hold hands and sing, “That is all that love’s about.” Wall E likes to imitate the movie by holding his own hands, but what he really wants is to hold someone else’s hand.
Eva
Eva is an Extraterrestrial Vegetation Evaluator (EVE) probe sent to Earth with the directive to find flora and/or fauna. Wall E is dirty and metallic, Eva sleek, clean, and plastic. “Directive?” is the first question she asks of Wall E. Her directive, which is also her story purpose, is her whole identity. It drives her actions for the first two acts of the movie. In act three, Eva meaningfully puts aside her directive in order to prioritize Wall E’s repair.
Eva begins as a tough character, one who follows orders rather than thinking for herself. 21 When Wall E attempts to introduce himself, she shoots at him. However, it is implied they are a good match when she starts dancing in the first act. 22 Eventually, Wall E teaches Eva to think for herself.
The Captain
At first, the Captain wants only to do his job well, despite his incompetence. He even turns back the clock on the ship rather than miss making his morning announcements. When he learns about Earth, his story purpose becomes to lead his shipmates there. 23 He imagines that the Axiom’s passengers will admire and celebrate him when they arrive on Earth. 24 Like Wall E, the Captain is motivated by a need to be appreciated by others.
Auto
Auto is the ship’s robot autopilot . Character Leading Trait Story Purpose He has been in control of the Axiom for the last seven hundred years. WallE Romantic To hold hands with Eva Centuries ago, he was ordered to Eva Career-driven To deliver the plant take over the ship and never to allow The Captain A leader To be a good ship’s captain humans to return to Earth. Auto Auto Obedient To follow orders antagonizes the film’s heroes, doing all in his power to prevent Eva and Wall E from returning the Axiom to Earth.
21 In other words, she is robotic. 22 In a good movie, the audience is not told who the love interest is, but is instead invited to match-make. 23 Maybe his real name is Starbuck. 24 They like me! They really like me! FILM RESOURCE | 9 III. Robots in Love: Wall E‘s Plot and Structure
When we say someone is down to earth , we mean they have realistic expectations. In Wall E, humanity has not only left the Earth, but become totally detached from reality. Instead of noticing one another or admiring their surroundings, the humans on the Axiom stare at advertisements all day. Our robot hero and heroine end up not only bringing humanity back down to Earth— literally—but reintroducing them to what it means to be human. Like most Hollywood films, Wall E follows a three-act structure. Framing the film’s three acts are Wall E’s actions in pursuit of the moment when he finally fulfills his story purpose— and holds Eva’s hand.
Objectives
By the time you complete this chapter, you should be able to answer the following questions.
What actions determine the act breaks?
What is the film’s midpoint?
Is Wall E a strong protagonist?
Act One
Opening shot: space, the final frontier. The music is BNL appropriately epic. As we descend through Earth’s atmosphere, it grows as playful as our protagonist . The “Buy and Large,” or BNL, is a fictional company jolly music contrasts with the Earth that comes into that monopolizes all the services humans need. We see a BNL gas station, BNL money—even a view. Piles of trash reach higher than the empty BNL President of the United States. skyscrapers. The “BNL” logo dominates the landscape.
The music is emanating from Wall E, a trash compactor robot who presses garbage into cubes. He discovers a hubcap. Fascinated, he adds it to his collection of human refuse 25 . He is particularly captivated when he finds a plant. We see Wall E watch the characters in the movie musical Hello, Dolly! as they sing about love and hold hands.
The only other inhabitants of Earth are cockroaches. The humans all escaped in a BNL space ship, the Axiom, once pollution left the Earth uninhabitable—700 years ago.
One day, a spaceship lands. Its technology is far more advanced than that of any machine on Earth. The ship drops off a robot named EVE and departs.
25 Unfamiliar with human priorities, Wall E throws away a diamond ring but keeps its box. FILM RESOURCE | 10
EVE begins scouring the Earth for something—we do not know what. Wall E is fascinated by her, but, alas, she shoots him whenever he tries to approach. 26 When a dust storm brews, Wall E comes to EVE’s rescue, bringing her to his home. Wall E cannot pronounce EVE, so he calls her “ Eva .” He shows Eva his collection of curiosities and Hello, Dolly! . Then he shows her the plant. Eva shudders, stores the plant within her robotic body, and shuts down.
Act Two
Wall E’s acts of love mark the breaks from one act to the next, including this one. They represent his, and humanity’s, basic need to connect with others. This central theme drives the film’s plot.
Here, smitten and concerned, Wall E keeps Eva safe until the space ship returns for her. 27 He climbs onto the outside of the ship and rides with it into space. 28 The ship docks at the Axiom, where robots take Eva away. Wall E follows them.
The chase scene allows us to explore the ship. It is a modern, pristine, colorful world full of obese people, robots, and BNL advertisements. Humans never leave their chairs, which hover above the ground. 29 Consumerism, represented by the insatiable BNL corporation, has brought humanity to its knees 30 .
Eva is brought to the Captain . The ship’s computer tells him that, once an EVE probe finds life on Earth, the Axiom can, at long last, return home. Much to Eva’s dismay, the plant has gone missing. The Captain sends both her and Wall E to be repaired. He then asks the computer to identify the filth covering Wall E. It turns out to be earth. “Wow!” the Captain coos.
The repair ward is filled with defective and quirky robots 31 . Watching Eva get her robot check-up, Wall E grows concerned and jealous. He breaks into the examining room, accidentally setting loose all the defective robots. He and Eva instantly become outlaws 32 .
Wall E and Eva spot an Axiom robot hiding the plant inside an escape capsule. When Wall E runs in to fetch it, he is ejected with the capsule. Eva gives chase, but the capsule explodes. “No, no,” she whispers.
Midpoint (where the film changes direction)
Ta da! Wall E flies by Eva, unharmed, using a fire extinguisher to propel himself around. Proudly, he presents the plant to Eva. The robots dance blissfully in space.
Movie plots often change direction at the midpoint. Here, at Wall E’s midpoint, Eva begins to show romantic feelings for Wall E.
26 I can totally empathize. 27 Best montage ever. 28 Hitchhiking on a spacecraft is easier when you don’t need to breathe. 29 Roald Dahl’s warning in the poem “Television” taken to an extreme. 30 Or its chairs, anyway. 31 Much like WSC Headquarters, if you replace “robots” with “laptops.” 32 I can’t even count the number of times this has happened to me. – Tania FILM RESOURCE | 11
Act Two, Continued
Wall E and Eva return to the Axiom. Drunk with love, Wall E reaches out his hands to Eva—but she is dedicated to recovering the plant.
The Captain views Eva’s recordings of her time on Earth, and is disheartened to learn Earth is trashed 33 . Seeing the recordings for the first time, Eva discovers how tenderly Wall E took care of her when she was shut down. She holds her own hands together, imagining holding hands with Wall E.
Enter the film’s antagonist: Auto , the ship’s autopilot. Seven centuries ago, BNL sent Auto a secret message: the Axiom must never return to Earth. Auto is determined to keep the Axiom in space, but the Captain asserts his authority and orders the plant delivered to a device called the holodetector, which will trigger the ship’s return to Earth.
Auto takes control back from the captain, and Eva and Wall E are hurled into the garbage airlock.
Wall E is injured, but his first thought is of Eva. He has, once again, saved the plant 34 , but Eva tosses it aside and changes her directive 35 . She reaches her hand out to Wall E, literally handing him his story purpose, but he declines. The plant is now a priority for both of them. Once Eva understands Wall E needs to return to Earth for solar power 36 , they decide on a common goal: reach Earth at any cost.
Act Three
Eva and Wall E burst free of the garbage airlock. They and the misfit robots unite against Auto. The Captain wrestles with Auto and activates the holodetector. Auto shuts down the holodetector, but Wall E body-blocks the device from closing, giving the Captain a chance to stand on his own two feet for the first time 37 . The Captain turns Auto off, and Eva puts the plant in place.
Success! But alas, the rigor of holding the machine open was too much for Wall E. He shuts down.
As soon as the ship returns to Earth, Eva bursts out, carrying Wall E. She repairs him and refills his batteries. Wall E reboots, only he is not the Wall E Eva knew. He bears no trace of his old personality and does not remember her. It is only when broken-hearted Eva reaches out to hold his hand that his personality returns.
In a 2D epilogue, we see Wall E and Eva live happily ever after, rebuilding Earth with their new human and robot friends, hand-in-hand. In a universe where Earth is uninhabitable and humanity has lost its desire for human contact, two robots in love have changed the course of history.
33 Well, it is also somewhat trash compacted, thanks to Wall E. 34 Though not yet the planet. 35 Quite directly, as is appropriate for a robot. She holds out her hand and states, “directive.” 36 Just wondering—shouldn’t solar power just require being near the sun? 37 Usually the phrase “on one’s own two feet” is a figure of speech, meaning to act independently – but in this case, it’s literal; the Captain and all the humans on the Axiom have spent their entire lives seated. FILM RESOURCE | 12 IV. Trash, Robots, and Love: Themes of Wall E
Suppose gerbils were a menace to society. You might write a science fiction film about a future hero who must defeat a mutant gerbil overlord. Wall E writer and director Andrew Stanton is worried about something more abstract—and insidious—than gerbils: consumerism, and the effects of technology on how humans lead their lives. The real villain in Wall E is not Auto: it is our Internet-enabled, convenience-centered way of life.
Objectives
By the time you complete this chapter, you should be able to answer the following questions.
How do robots teach us about humanity?
How does technology distance us from each other?
Is our planet becoming overrun with trash?
How does Wall E demonstrate Hollywood’s evolving perceptions of true love?
Robots Are People, Too
“[\][ch’ao<186>][el’ao<139>z][‘aa<138>rr<109>]!”
You might not know how to respond to the above—the first statement that Kismet the robot made all by itself. Dr. Cynthia Breazeal of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) developed Kismet in the 1990s. She has a vision of robots that interact with and assist humans, much like Wall E and Eva 38 . To that end, Breazeal, as well as other robot researchers, are learning about people.
To fulfill her vision of robots accepted Watch it on YouTube into our homes, Dr. Breazeal believes robots must exhibit emotional behavior. Watch Dr. Breazeal’s robot “Leo” learn to fear Cookie Monster, a For that reason, Kismet expresses a range character from the popular children’s TV show Sesame Street : of emotions, including happiness, sadness, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ilmDN2e_Flc&feature=related anger, and surprise. 39 In addition to building Kismet, Breazeal’s team at MIT built Autom, a diet and exercise coaching robot. Autom provides lifestyle guidance, and even cheers you on, much like the beautician robot in Wall E.
To build robots like Autom that can interact with us 40 , researchers must first study people and their social traits, such as empathy. How we interpret each other’s eye contact, for example, shapes how the scientists program a robot’s eye movements. 41
38 And C-3PO and R2-D2. 39 I wonder if he can be programmed to become verklempt. 40 And robots like Auto, that can antagonize us. 41 Robots can, in other words, be taught to flirt. FILM RESOURCE | 13
While Breazeal focuses on the sociability of robots, scientist Douglas Lenat works on another problem with human/computer interaction: common sense. So many concepts that are intuitive to us are brand new to a computer. For example, a computer does not know that people smile when they are happy 42 . Lenat’s CYC project based in Austin, Texas has been cataloguing common sense information, fact by fact. Since 1984, CYC has programmed approximately six million pieces of information into its database.
Elsewhere, scientists are pursuing “machine learning.” Watson, the I.B.M. computer that recently competed against human contestants on the TV game show Jeopardy , built up its I.Q. by machine learning. Watson was given many different examples of the same thing, like different recordings of a spoken word. The machine identified patterns and learned to sort through them by itself.
“[The idea] that robots could be living creatures is going to be hard for us, but we’re going to come to accept it over the next fifty years or so,” says Rodney Brooks, a former MIT robotics professor. As we build robots with greater abilities to learn, emote and communicate, robots as self-aware as Wall E and Eva will cease to be science fiction—perhaps within those same fifty years.
Future Friending
Facebook, Skype, iPhones, Blackberries—these technologies are designed to facilitate human contact, but critics argue they detach us from the people around us. Judging from Wall E, Andrew Stanton agrees with that opinion.
In the film, humans have grown attached to their chairs the way many of us are attached to our cell phones. The first scene that features two unnamed human beings shows them side-by-side in their hover chairs. They talk to each other, but via computer screens, not face-to-face. Their dependence on technology separates them.
Wall E bumps into John , knocking him out of his chair. Later, Wall E bumps into Mary , shutting off her screen. Mary looks in amazement at the colorful world around her. “I didn’t know we had a pool!” she exclaims. Only John and Mary notice Wall E and Eva dancing in space at the film’s midpoint, because they are the only ones not totally absorbed in their technology. They hold hands by accident, and romance ensues. Thanks to a robot’s bumbling quest for love, these two humans are brought together.
Sherry Turkle , professor at MIT and author of the book Alone Together , has studied our relationship with computers for more than thirty years. Many of us, she argues, use technologies such as Facebook and cell phones to combat the threat of loneliness, constantly looking for reassurance that others are thinking of us. We may have, on some level, lost the capacity to be alone. 43
42 Or that alpacas should make you smile in the first place. 43 It is hard to say whether social media has merely given us access to a level of connectivity and attention we always longed for, or has created a new need for this connectivity and attention. FILM RESOURCE | 14
The time has come, Turkle argues, to be more mindful of our relationship with technology—to take a step back and ask what we want that relationship to be. Wall E can be seen as a playful cautionary tale with a similar message. If we depend upon technology too much, we may come to a point when we forget how to be human.
Trash Planet
Andrew Stanton says he never intended to make a political statement through Wall E. But, by depicting a world overwhelmed with trash, the film inevitably comments upon a contentious political issue: the future of the environment. Indeed, an early working title for Wall E was “Trash Planet.”
Stanton is not alone in imagining we might allow consumption to get out of hand, stripping the planet of resources. A popular YouTube video, “ The Story of Stuff ,” tracks the journey of the objects we buy from their manufacturing out of natural resources to their sale at stores and on to their final rest in giant landfills. It suggests that, if the whole world consumed as much as just the United States does, we would need three to five planet Earths to provide the necessary resources. We would quickly exhaust the planet— just like the humans in Wall E did.
Plastic bottles, toys, old cell phones— Debate It garbage patches larger than some countries 44 float in almost every ocean. Resolved: That “Trash Planet” would have been just as good a title Marine researcher Charles Moore took as Wall E for the film. part in a scientific expedition to research the so-called Great Pacific Garbage Patch Watch it on YouTube in 2008. He reports, “There is a Texas- The Story of Stuff size section of the Pacific Ocean that is http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gLBE5QAYXp8 irretrievably clogged with garbage and it will never go away.”
Even the look of Earth from space is changing—a fact reflected in Wall E. Within the first two minutes of the film, the camera descends from orbit to Earth through a brown haze. In recent years, NASA has announced the presence of a Giant Brown Cloud over South Asia and the Indian Ocean. NASA describes it as a mixed-particle haze—essentially, pollution. Studies have shown the Cloud to be reducing rainfall and hindering agriculture.
Wall E ends with a montage showing humans cleaning up the Earth and rediscovering their agricultural skills. Debate it! Our piles of trash may continue to grow, but the film Resolved: That Andrew Stanton’s vision of a “trash leaves us with hope for a cleaner world ahead. Hopefully planet” is prophetic. we can avoid the in-between steps.
44 Singapore, we’re looking at you. Sorry! FILM RESOURCE | 15
Love and Compromise
In the movie, the human race has lost its way 45 . People have forgotten how to walk or even stand upright 46 . They hardly look directly at each other anymore. Not one has touched the surface of a planet for 700 years. The implication is that humans have forgotten how to fully engage in life. They live like babies, absorbed with whatever is placed directly in front of them. Wall E is a robot, who has learned about love from Hello, Dolly! , a relic of humanity’s past. As a messenger from the past, Wall E the robot teaches the Captain and the Axiom passengers about themselves. His quest ends up reminding the humans about love—most specifically, in the story of John and Mary, but also more broadly.
Wall E learns from his Hello, Dolly! video that love involves holding hands. In Hello, Dolly! , the leading man falls in love with the leading lady in a single day. “That is all that love’s about,” they sing as they hold hands. Audiences, says Andrew Stanton, have grown too cynical to accept this kind of innocent, fairy tale love. “I wanted to wallow in that innocent wonder and joy that you could get out of a love story in a 1950s musical,” said Stanton, “but I feel there’s no way the world would accept that in today’s society.”
As a result, he dressed the story up with modern and futuristic details. Stanton created a de-humanizing, dystopian world in opposition to the lead characters’ innocent love. Mini-Directed Research Area: Luxo Jr. Luxo Jr . was the short film that started it all for Pixar, and Wall E may live in a desolate, lonely the company honors its beginnings by using the film’s main place, but he can love. He dreams of character in its logo. Directed by John Lasseter and affectionate contact. Because people completed in 1986, Luxo Jr. tells a complete story in less stopped loving each other, the film than two minutes. implies, the world corroded. Stanton Watch Pixar’s famous short here: http://tinyurl.com/d7z9u4f mirrors Wall E’s hope for love in Discuss the three-act structure of the short film and the the little green plant that grows on characters’ story purposes. Then do the same with 1988 the rubbish. It constitutes hope for Oscar Winner, Tin Toy : http://tinyurl.com/7lhpvel the Earth.
The character of Eva also fulfills a modern audience’s expectations for a female lead. She is a no- nonsense, career woman focused on her directive. Though more modern than a fairy tale princess, Eva develops the kind of innocent love featured in films like Hello, Dolly! . By the third act, Wall E has helped her realize her directive is not as important as love. She too wants to hold hands.
Andrew Stanton hoped that by contrasting the old-fashioned and the new-fangled—the fertile and the infertile—he would give his audience permission to let their guard down, discard cynicism, and celebrate the joy of the genre.
45 But not its appetite. 46 They have evolved, or devolved, into Homo lazyus . FILM RESOURCE | 16 V. Producing Life is Beautiful : From the Circus to the Oscar Stage
“I want to kiss everybody!” That’s Roberto-Benigni-speak for “thank you.” After jumping on the backs of the seats in the theater to reach the stage and accept his Academy Award, Benigni grew a bit more sober, quoting his favorite poets and dedicating his film to those who died in the Holocaust. Then, he told the audience he would like to be like Zeus, kidnap them, and make passionate love to them all. 47 That was in 1999. In 2000, when Benigni was a presenter at the Oscars, host Billy Crystal took the precaution of bringing a net to capture him in case he went crazy.
Objectives
By the time you complete this chapter, you should be able to answer the following questions:
What has shaped Roberto Benigni’s work? What is one of the most influential Italian films? From what real life experiences did Benigni draw?
Influences
When Roberto Benigni was 13 or 14, living near Prato, Italy, he worked in a circus as a magician’s assistant. In return for being hypnotized and set on fire, the circus folk taught him pantomime and gymnastics. A stronger influence on Benigni were the circus’s so-called poeti a braccio .
The poeti a braccio were Italian poet-performers who improvised eight-line, hendecasyllabic poems (containing eleven syllables per line). They would compete against one another, each improvising a response to the previous poet using his or her opponent’s rhyme scheme. 48
Roberto immersed himself in this tradition, which was rich with references to great figures in Italian literature, such as Dante and Ariosto. This, and a love of reading, helped Benigni develop an excellent understanding of literature in spite of little formal education. Today, he still engages in poetry battles with novelist and scholar Umberto Eco.
Circus verse aside, Benigni did not intend to become a poet. After falling in love with the films of the English silent movie
47 Mythological pick up lines. Smooth. 48 This tradition poses a challenge that might bring even Lil Wayne to his knees. FILM RESOURCE | 17 star Charlie Chaplin, he set his eyes on becoming a comedian. Benigni says he was greatly influenced by Chaplin’s physical humor. 49
Influences
In the 1970s, Benigni developed his entertaining skills working in the theaters of Rome and the Italian countryside. He travelled Tuscany with a troupe of actors, improvising fake political meetings that informed his later work.
In his late 20s, Benigni apprenticed with one of Italy’s greatest filmmakers, Cesare Zavattini, best known for his contributions to the 1948 classic The Bicycle Thief . In 1989, Benigni acted in Federico Fellini’s final film, La Voce della Luna . From Fellini, Benigni learned a formalistic (structure- based) approach to cinema. He returned to this structure in Life Is Beautiful .
The Beautiful Life of Life Is Beautiful
Life Is Beautiful is the brain child of writer/director Benigni, who co-wrote the film with Vicenzo Cerami. Benigni first worked with Cerami when acting for the famous Italian director Pier Paolo Pasolini. Benigni and Cerami wrote together for the first time on the film The Little Devil in 1988.
For Life is Beautiful , Benigni was inspired by his father’s stories of being interned in a Nazi labor camp—like a concentration camp, but less focused on killing. The Benignis are not Jewish, but Luigi Benigni was sent to a labor camp because he was an Italian soldier. Luigi spared his son the horrible details, not wanting to frighten him.
Critics say the film marks Benigni’s Watch it on YouTube maturation as an artist. He admits it is unlike any of his previous films. Though a Benigni at the Oscars comedy 50 about the Holocaust was seen as http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8cTR6fk8frs&feature=relmfu risky by his movie-making peers, it met with great success. Life Is Beautiful won the Grand Prix at the 1998 Cannes Film Festival, and brought Benigni the Oscar for Best Actor and Best Foreign Language Film in 1999. 51
Benigni’s two films since, the very costly Watch it on YouTube Pinocchio (2002) and a love story set during the Iraq War, The Tiger and the Benigni at the Oscars Snow (2005), have not enjoyed nearly as http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8cTR6fk8frs&feature=relmfu much critical or commercial success.
Perhaps they were not beautiful enough. 52
49 He may also reference Greek gods and offer to make love to you. 50 Because of tragic events within the film, it can be called a tragicomedy. 51 The film also won an Oscar for Best Music, Original Dramatic Score. 52 Or perhaps they should have featured three-dimensional computer-animated aliens. FILM RESOURCE | 18 VI. Characters in Life Is Beautiful
“’Tis but a scratch,” claims Mercutio in Shakespeare’s play Romeo and Juliet , referring to his fatal wound. 53 He refuses to accept the seriousness of his situation. Entire populations sometimes claim that a growing problem in their midst is “just a scratch” when, in fact, terrible changes are afoot. Life Is Beautiful suggests that being a hero means facing up to reality. Bravery is not acting in ignorance of danger; it is acting despite it.
Objectives
By the time you complete this chapter, you should be able to answer the following questions.
Which characters become aware of the world’s dangers, and which do not? What is Guido’s moment of crisis, and how does he respond?
Guido
Guido is an educated Italian Jew living at the time of the Holocaust. He uses his sense of humor to protect his family from the growing atrocities around them. At first, Guido fails or refuses to recognize the looming conflict in Italy. “What could possibly happen to me?” he asks. Only when Guido sees a pile of human bodies in the concentration camp can he can no longer convince himself everything—or even anything—is all right. The realization spurs him to attempt to rescue his family. German soldiers murder Guido shortly before the camp is liberated—but his son, whom he protected against all odds, survives. The film demonstrates the protective power of humor and love.
Dora
Dora begins the film as a teacher engaged to a Fascist, Rodolfo. She recognizes her fiancé’s views are horribly wrong and asks her “prince,” Guido, to take her away from him. He does so gladly. Dora and Guido’s private world of domestic bliss cannot keep hatred at bay; Nazis take Dora’s Jewish family. They would allow her to remain behind, because she is not Jewish, but she chooses to follow her husband and son to the concentration camp.
53 The Black Knight in Monty Python and the Holy Grail repeats this phrase, though quite ironically. FILM RESOURCE | 19
Joshua
Joshua is Guido and Dora’s five-year-old son, whom Guido shields from the horrors all around him. We see that he deals with the ordeal as an adult when we learn that a full-grown Joshua narrates the film.
Eliseo
Eliseo is Guido’s uncle. Unlike most of the characters, he sees the Holocaust coming. He tries to warn Guido when his horse is vandalized, but to no avail. Eliseo perishes in a gas chamber in the concentration camp, but retains his good nature to the end, even in the face of unspeakable horror.
Dr. Lessing
Dr. Lessing loses sleep over riddles, but never concerns himself with the suffering of the Jews. He does not recognize that the Nazis are committing atrocities. Lessing is an adult in a position of power, but does not use his status to help his friend, Guido or anyone else.
Nazis are the film’s antagonists, but they do not acknowledge Guido as an individual. Dr. Lessing is Guido’s friend, making him a more personal antagonist. His portrayal speaks to one of the film’s lasting criticisms—of people who refuse to acknowledge the dangerous developments around them. FILM RESOURCE | 20 VII. La Vita è Organized: Plot and Structure
From Ash Ketchum vs. Team Rocket to the black-and-white ballerinas of Black Swan , TV and movies often show life as a balance between good and bad, light and darkness. Life Is Beautiful begins in the light—in the sunshine of the Italian countryside. The film’s color palette turns gray in the second half of the film, as darkness grows more evident. Amid the comedic lightness of the film’s first half, there is racism. In the grayness of the concentration camp, there is humor and love.
Objectives
By the time you complete this chapter, you should be able to answer the following questions.
How does the protagonist, Guido, change?
What is the tone of the film?
How is the film structured?
Act One
“This is a simple story,” begins the film, Do you speak ‘‘movie?’’ “but not an easy one to tell.” We see a Every line of work comes with its own language, terms that man who holds a child walking through everyone in the business understands. To make it in Hollywood, you blue mist. This image will return later in will need to know these terms: the film. Sequence: a series of shots or scenes functioning as a The tone shifts. We emerge into the narrative unit, like a chapter in a book. Often a sequence takes place in a single location or addresses a single Italian sunlight of 1939. On a country subject. The part of Life is Beautiful that takes place at drive, Guido and his friend Oreste Dora’s engagement party is a sequence. discover their brakes are broken. “We’re Running gag: when a joke is used throughout a movie, it going to die!” they exclaim as they bumble is called a “running gag.” Running gags should escalate through the countryside. They careen each time they are used. Guido stealing the hat belonging through a crowd of villagers as Guido to Oreste’s father is a running gag. waves for them to get out of the way. The To pay off: filmmakers sometimes place information into villagers mistake his wave for the Fascist the story early on and later use it in an entertaining way. salute. Guido realizes the villagers’ mistake When that entertaining moment arrives, the filmmaker is as the title appears on screen. This “paying that information off.” Guido sees a man shout to a moment predicts the tone of the film: woman named Mary, asking her to throw him a key. That is paid off when Guido tells Dora the Mother Mary will funny yet ominous. grant him the key to her heart. He shouts to Mary for the When the men stop to repair the car, key, and she throws it down. Guido happens upon a teenage girl. “I am Montage: a series of shots edited together, usually to a prince,” he claims. Suddenly, a pretty show the passage of time. In Wall E, the scene in which Wall E looks after the dormant Eva is a montage. lady falls onto him from a barn window. FILM RESOURCE | 21
He breaks her fall, and the lady instantly becomes his “ principessa ”—his princess.
Guido travels to Rome to make a living. His first stop is his uncle’s hotel, where he will work as a waiter. Dr. Lessing becomes Guido’s best customer, loving to trade riddles with him. “A genius,” Lessing even calls Guido. Guido is, indeed, a man of letters, and dreams of opening a bookshop. He applies for permission through official channels, but the appropriate bureaucrat, Rodolfo, refuses to be bothered. Slapstick humor ensues, leaving Rodolfo dizzy and covered in egg yolk.
Guido’s professional goals do not distract him from his principessa. After visiting her several times, Guido follows her to the opera, where she is out with Rodolfo. 54 Guido steals a moment with her. A sequence follows—their first date. It pays off several running gags, including Dr. Lessing’s riddles.
Act Two
There are three more sequences before we reach the film’s midpoint. The first is Dora’s engagement party in anticipation of her marriage to Rodolfo.
Before the party, the horse belonging to Guido’s Uncle Leo’s is painted with the words, “Warning: Jewish horse.” Uncle Eliseo warns Guido of the growing danger to Jews.
“What could possibly happen to me?” Guido responds, and continues telling jokes as usual.
At the party, Dora meets Guido under the table and asks him to take her away from Rodolfo. Guido seizes the moment: he rides in on the vandalized horse and spirits her away 55 into the night. He has won his principessa at last.
The next sequence shows us Guido’s happy family life. Five years later, he has his bookshop and remains as humorous as ever in the face of mounting hostility towards the Jews of Italy. Now, his comedy is for the sake of both Dora and their five-year-old son Joshua.
The third sequence begins the family’s change in fortune. Dora discovers that Guido, Uncle Eliseo, and Joshua have been taken away because they are Jewish. She could choose to remain in Rome, but boards the German train holding her family.
Wall E follows Robert McKee’s advice and structures its story around events . To find the events that mark Life is Beautiful ’s structure, one must find the climax of each sequence : Guido steals Dora on a horse, Guido and his family are taken away, and Dora joins her family on the German train.
Midpoint
The train carries the family to a concentration camp. The elderly and women are separated from the men, and Guido and Joshua are sent to the men’s quarters. • The midpoint in Life Is Beautiful
54 What could she see in him? 55 But not into a mysterious, animated world of suburban Japanese monsters. FILM RESOURCE | 22 marks a complete change in setting and tone—from relative bliss and innocence in Rome to the horrors of a Nazi concentration camp.
Act Two Continued
Guido begins an elaborate deception to keep Joshua from despairing. He tells his son that their whole experience in the concentration camp is just a game, and that the first person to earn a thousand points will win a military tank. He explains the rules: Joshua will lose points if he is afraid, cries, or asks for food.
In the next sequence, Uncle Eliseo is killed, and Joshua survives only because of his contempt for bathing. Now, little Joshua must hide from the Nazis, because if they know he is still alive, they will surely kill him. Guido remains playful, against all odds. He commandeers the loud speaker to let Dora know her family is safe: “Buon giorno, principessa!”
Dr. Lessing turns out to be the concentration camp’s doctor. With hope in his eye, Guido engages the doctor in a discussion of riddles. After Dr. Lessing recommends Guido for the relatively easy job of waiter, Guido believes his troubles will soon end. But Dr. Lessing is interested only in riddles. He knows what is happening to the Jewish people, but does not care enough, or is not brave enough, to take a stand against the atrocities or to save Guido.
We are brought back to the image at the top of the film. When Guido carries his son back to the men’s quarters, he loses his way in the fog and finds a pile of dead bodies. Joshua does not see it, but Guido can no longer avoid acknowledging how terribly wrong the world has gone.
Act Three
The war is over, and the Nazis are fleeing and massacring prisoners in a panic—possibly to eliminate eyewitnesses to their atrocities. Guido hides Joshua in an iron box, and then infiltrates the women’s quarters, looking for Dora. The Germans capture Guido and force him, at gunpoint, past Joshua’s hiding place. Guido knows he is on his way to die, but performs a silly goose step so Joshua will not be afraid and scream. Guido is then shot dead off-camera.
Dawn comes, and the Nazis are gone. Joshua emerges in time to see an American tank arrive. A tank! Joshua believes he has won the game. The Americans in the tank even take him for a ride. “This is my story,” we hear in voiceover as the child is reunited with his mother. “This is the sacrifice my father made.” FILM RESOURCE | 23 VIII. Horror and Humor: Themes of Life Is Beautiful
At the Oscars, Benigni quipped, thanking his parents for the greatest gift of all: “poverty.” Benigni uses humor to put hardships in perspective, allowing people to see that, even when life is hard, it can be beautiful. In Life Is Beautiful , Benigni puts this concept to the test, asking us whether humor and beauty can hold up against the absolute horrors of the Holocaust. At the same time, he implies that there is a fine line between making light of a situation and denying it. We can laugh and love in the face of danger, but we must recognize the danger— if we can.
Objectives
By the time you complete this chapter, you should be able to answer the following questions.
Why didn’t people predict the horrors of the Holocaust? What is the film’s model of resistance? How is physicality used in the film? Why does Benigni choose a fabulist approach? What makes Guido a trickster?
Inconceivable! 56
It is hard to wrap one’s mind Mini-Directed Research Area: Mussolini and Anti- around horrors as great as those Semitism of the Holocaust. Most Italians Italian Fascism was not inherently anti-Semitic. At first there of the late 1930s and early 1940s were even Jewish Fascists. After Il Duce (Mussolini) gained were unaware of the growing power in 1922 and befriended Germany in the 1930s, he dangers fascism posed to the introduced anti-Semitic policies gradually. Jewish people. Guido begins the Read this brief history of Mussolini: www.tinyurl.com/7p4e4q8 film like most Italian Jews of the Feel free to explore other sources as well. Discuss as a team: did late 1930s. The racial laws the slow development of Mussolini’s anti-Semitism contribute forbidding Jews from receiving to Guido’s naïveté in the first half of the film? an education or working as teachers had been in effect since 1938, but genocide was still far from people’s minds. Italian news was censored at the time, and many did not believe the news they heard from other countries. They believed it to be propaganda. The average Italian did not know about concentration camps. Many shared Guido’s attitude, “What could they possibly do to me?”
“Where are they taking us?” Guido asks his Uncle Eliseo inside a Nazi truck. Even in enemy hands, Guido is not aware of the horrors ahead. Eliseo has understood the dangers from the beginning. He tried to warn Guido when the horse was vandalized. As the only character in the film aware of the
56 “No more rhymes now, I mean it.” “Anybody want a peanut?” FILM RESOURCE | 24 potential danger early on, Eliseo serves as a guide. In the first act, he explains to Guido that God is a servant. He serves man and is not a servant to man, meaning that God is no puppet master and man is ultimately responsible for himself.
Benigni has said Joshua is more aware of the reality of the concentration camp than his father believes. He points to the scene where Joshua instinctively recognizes his grandmother even though they have never met. In another scene, Joshua has heard men talk about the camp’s horrors. Employing reverse psychology, Guido pretends to forfeit the game, but, ultimately, Joshua chooses to accept it. Not only is it a more manageable version of reality, in a way it makes more sense than the truth.
Dr. Lessing knows the truth, but refuses to recognize its horror. The only tragedy he experiences is his inability to answer a riddle—one Benigni has stated is pure nonsense. The implication is that the horrors of the Holocaust are also inconceivable.
Guido fully realizes the barbarity of the Holocaust when he sees the mountain of cadavers. As the hero of our film—the prince of our fable—Guido rises to meet the responsibility inherent in this understanding. He runs throughout the camp to gather his family, and, when he knows he is about to die, he performs his most heroic deed: he clowns. Understanding the horror but continuing to act with hope and kindness is this film’s definition of heroism.
Riddle Answer Theme The bigger it is; the less you see of it. Obscurity Understanding When you say my name, I’m no longer there. Silence Silence Fat, fat, ugly, ugly, all yellow in reality. If you ask me what I am, I answer, No answer. Understanding “cheep, cheep, cheep.” Walking along, I go, “poo poo.” Who am I? It is nonsense.
Silence and Goodness as Power
What could a Jew do at the barrel of a Nazi gun? Rubino Romeo Salmoni wrote a memoir of his time in Auschwitz called In the End, I Beat Hitler . Salmoni wrote that, by surviving the Auschwitz concentration camp and leading a beautiful life, he ruined Hitler’s plan for him. Life Is Beautiful similarly salutes the dignity of silent resistance.
The flipside of this dignity is the futility of physical confrontation. When Guido hides his son in a box and runs around the camp looking for Dora, the soldiers capture him, and there is nothing he can do to fend off the soldier who kills him. Uncle Eliseo finds himself similarly helpless in the gas chamber. His resistance comes in the form of compassion: he helps a Nazi who trips. We then see a close-up of the soldier’s face. Though she remains firm, she is clearly affected by Eliseo’s kindness. As Eliseo says to Guido in the first act, “Silence is the most powerful cry.” The soldier knows she is participating in something terrible.
Eliseo’s compassion shows he retains his belief in the better nature of man. In a world governed by FILM RESOURCE | 25 death, it is almost impossible to stay alive. The way to resist is passive: by being a good person and having faith—by surviving as long as possible with your soul untainted. Even though Eliseo dies, he keeps his good nature to the end. His brave silence speaks louder than genocide.
Life Is Beautiful and Funny-----Against all Odds
Russian leader Leon Trotsky was awaiting his inevitable execution in Mexico in 1940 when he saw his wife in the “Guido represents total liberty, the sparkle and shine in life.” garden, and wrote that, in spite of it all, “life is beautiful.” This quote has been cited as the inspiration for the film’s Roberto Benigni title. Life Is Beautiful affirms the value and beauty of life in the face of unspeakable discrimination and mass murder.
Adolf Hitler and his Nazi followers asserted certain lives were worth less than others—or simply worthless. Hitler ranked the races of the world as he saw them. Highest ranked was his own so-called Aryan race 57 . In the middle of the list were the Japanese, having been given credit for assimilating Aryan technology. At the bottom of the list were the Jews. Nazis accused Jews of living at the expense of others, and associated them with ill health and filth. People with health problems joined the Jews at the bottom of the list, a point echoed in the school principal’s math problem: cripples, lunatics and epileptics cost the state an average of 4 marks a day. If all 300,000 of these patients were killed, how much money would the state save? On the surface, it is hard to see how life could be beautiful or funny in the face of such dangerous bigotry.
Guido’s humor, especially his physical comedy, subverts these racist attitudes. When the principal mistakes Guido for the Fascist Inspector, she asks him to demonstrate the superiority of the Aryan race—a great irony, as he is Jewish. Guido has already ruined the effect of the Fascist sash by wrapping it between his legs. Now Guido stands on a desk and strips. “Where could you find one more beautiful than me?” He claims his pale, scrawny body to be the model of perfection.
Guido’s last stand at the end of the film, goose-stepping past Joshua’s hiding place, is again physical comedy. Even though humor cannot save him from death, it conveys the same message as the scene at the school: it is possible to laugh amid great injustice. Enjoying life when others want to destroy you is a form of subversion and revenge. Guido’s death is the focal tragedy of the film, yet is followed by the life-affirming defeat of the Nazis and beautiful reunion of his wife and son. The protagonist dies, but love lives; life is beautiful, even in the wake of loss.
In Life Is Beautiful , Guido’s feeble body is beautiful. Art is beautiful. The love of one’s family is beautiful. To think anyone or any part of life is not beautiful is the real joke.
The Trickster
Elmer Fudd never nabs his “wascally wabbit.” Captain Jack Sparrow disappears in a conversation with two soldiers. They turn around, and he is on their boat. Oreste’s father turns around to find that Guido has stolen his hat again . Bugs Bunny, Captain Jack and Guido are all classic tricksters . Life Is Beautiful demonstrates the vital role tricksters and their comedy play at the worst of times.
57 How convenient. FILM RESOURCE | 26
Christopher Vogler, author of The Writer’s Journey , writes that tricksters draw attention to imbalance and absurdity. By taking on the role of a fascist inspector Guido deflates racist science. To claim the superiority of one person’s ear or a bellybutton over another’s is absurd, as Guido demonstrates. “No spiders or Visigoths 58 !” He declares, commenting upon the fascist rule allowing “no Jews or dogs.”
Comedy is not usually thought the cultural equal of “[Artists] are like miners who pull drama. Benigni attributed the doubts people had about things out, pieces of coal or pieces of his film to this common prejudice against comedians— gold deep within us that we have yet comedians know that, for a joke to be funny, it must never seen before that frighten us, ring true. Comedy makes light of reality, but often truly frighten us.” illuminates it as well as or better than drama does. As Benigni tells it, “Sometimes only clowns can reach the Roberto Benigni summit of tragedy.” 59
Once Upon a Time
Blue Beard is a fairy tale villain who murders his wives. The Pied Piper makes all the children in the town of Hamelin disappear. The troll in “The Three Billy Goats Gruff” eats those who try to cross his bridge. These villains are purely evil. Whether or not it is realistic for someone to be pure evil, we accept it in the context of a fairy tale. In the case of Life Is Beautiful , evil comes in the form of the Nazis. Benigni calls Life Is Beautiful a “realistic fable.” He uses the hyper-reality of a fable to tell a difficult story—one that would be much harder to watch without exaggeration and romance.
From his apprenticeship with Cesare Zavattini, Benigni Giuseppe Garibaldi acquired a love of fables. Federico Fellini is reported to Uncle Eliseo boasts that Giuseppe Garibaldi once have called Benigni “a friend of monsters, princesses and stayed in his home. In the 1800s, the fractured frogs.” In the beginning of Life Is Beautiful , Benigni hints Italian states fought among themselves to we are in the world of a fable. Guido calls himself a prince achieve an ideal, independent, and unified Italy. and Dora his princess. He rides in on a white horse 60 to Garibaldi was a great hero of this struggle, save her from the wicked bureaucrat, Rodolfo. having accomplished, among other feats, taking Sicily from France. Since then, Italians have The film also has an improbable storyline. Knowing the revered him as a hero. Even the Fascists claimed Holocaust was a delicate topic, Benigni consulted him as one of their own. Marcello Pezzetti of the Contemporary Jewish Documentation Center. Pezzetti pointed out that the story was not realistic. In the real world, Joshua would never have survived the first day at the concentration camp. The relatively easy train ride to the camp is similarly a nicer version of reality.
Pezzetti acknowledged that, Life Is Beautiful was a fable at heart. Benigni and Cerami took Pezzetti’s feedback and chose to limit the film’s realism. The camp is made of brick instead of the more historically accurate wood. The pile of cadavers Guido sees at the end of Act Two is intended to look fake. We experience horrors that really did happen, but through the lens of a “once upon a time”.
We have already discussed the difficulty Guido has comprehending the evil he faces, and how that reflects the experience Italians had in the 1940s. When reality and common sense defy the existence of such great evil, the fairy tale genre—with its absolute, irredeemable villains—becomes a perfect fit.
58 The Visigoths were an ancient Christian people. It’s like saying, “No ancient Romans!” 59 The clowns will probably throw water balloons off the summit to splash the dramatic actors standing below. 60 Eliseo’s horse is named Robin Hood, after a character of romantic legend. FILM RESOURCE | 27 Arrivederci
If conquering aliens had only movies to teach them about life on Earth, they’d learn a good deal of human history. They could learn about the Holocaust from Life is Beautiful and about ancient Rome from Gladiator 61 . They could learn about the war in Iraq from The Hurt Locker , and about Wizard-Muggle relations from Harry Potter.
But, mostly, they would experience the power and production values of the human imagination—because even the most straightforward documentary embodies the vision of its maker.
We’ve seen how Life is Beautiful Mini-Directed Research Area: The Real Wall-E reimagines history to bring out the heroism of dignity and humor; it is A real-life trash-collecting robot now roams the streets of hard to watch Guido’s goose steps Italy. Check it out at http://inhabitat.com/real-life-wall-e- recycling-robot-takes-to-the-streets-of-italy/ and without feeling goose bumps. His http://spectrum.ieee.org/automaton/robotics/industrial- singular purpose, his certain robots/042110-recycling-robots . Then, discuss with your courage: is there a medium other team: are we headed for a future in which robots clean up than film that could capture them after us? Would that be a good thing? so vividly? The film is an eloquent warning, a tragedy, a comedy, and Debate It an inspirational tale—all at once. Wall E would be a more influential film if it were live action, not animated. In Wall E the present day is reimagined as a sort of future history; the film cautions against consumerism and “computerism”, but it does so by showing us where they could lead, not telling us. Again, it is one thing to read about fat lonely people on hover chairs and the ruined Earth they left behind; it is another to see it animated before us.
Some films overtly aim to influence history. Al Gore’s 2006 documentary An Inconvenient Truth is credited, for example, with raising global awareness of climate change. Wall E and Life is Beautiful may not have been created specifically to influence global policy—but their impact on the world could be even more varied, and just as deep.
61 They would certainly come away with a very violent vision of Italy. FILM RESOURCE | 28 Works Consulted
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New York Basic Books, Inc., Publishers, 1987. FILM RESOURCE | 29 About the Author
Emily Paul has recently returned from living for two years in Singapore , where she earned her MFA in dramatic writing from the New York University Tisch School of the Arts Asia. The subjects of her scripts include singing zombies and talking spiders. In real life, she can juggle and sculpt balloon animals , making her the hit at a party—assuming the party is populated mostly by three year-olds. Emily has also worked as an ESL teacher.
About the Editor
Tania Asnes has never been to outer space, but she did once venture to Italy – driving there from Paris, during which time she discovered that the brakes of a Chrysler Sebring convertible are prone to failure after speeding up and down the Swiss Alps for several hours. A senior writer, curriculum editor, and alpaca priestess for DemiDec, Tania also works as a professional actress.
Tania recently collaborated with Daniel to outline a story involving zombies and Thai tofu duck.
About the Alpaca-in-Chief
Daniel Berdichevsky did not always want to be a professional nerd —that happened by accident 62 . Instead, he hoped to write the songs for animated Disney feature films 63 . He therefore laments that Wall-E and Eva never sing a duet as they fall in love; he would even have been all right with a spoof song—say, A Whole Old World , or Beauty and the Bot .
Daniel once had an up-close-and-personal experience with a “Trash Planet”—running through a landfill in Azerbaijan in his suit. He subsequently retired the suit. The Benigni-esque sequence leading to this episode of physical comedy can, unfortunately, be observed on YouTube .
You can also find Daniel on Facebook at www.facebook.com/dan.berd .
62 Insofar as some accidents are 100% inevitable. 63 Leading his parents to wonder why he couldn’t just want to be an engineer. Or a fireman.