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This may be like saying Santa has no clothes, but Roberto Benigni’s much-vaunted, award-winning holocaust film Life Is Beautiful wasn’t a great movie. Sure, it was funny in places and anguished in others, but it was too silly to blend the two. Anyone looking to better explore the crucial part humor plays in surviving such horror would be much better served by seeing Jakob the Liar.
In a dreamy opening sequence, the titular character (Robin Williams) chases a windblown scrap of newspaper through a crowded Polish ghetto while explaining, “We relied on the little things: a dark joke, a sunny day, a hopeful rumor.” It is seeking the last of these that fortuitously lands him in the office of his Nazi captors as brief word of advancing Russian troops is given on a propaganda radio broadcast. Starved for even the slightest possibility of rescue before they can be transferred to the camps, Jakob’s few confidants jump on the news as if it were a scrap of food, spreading it throughout the ghetto with ample embellishment as it goes. Suddenly, even though “hope can be dangerous in a place where it’s forbidden,” one of the last breathing Jewish communities has fresh impetus to survive. All of which only complicates Jakob’s life further, as everyone comes to believe he’s hiding a radio in his basement, a crime punishable by death. Overnight his every movement gives rise to further wild speculation -- that he’s chatting with Churchill, hiding a paratrooper, or organizing a resistance cell -- none of which escapes German attention.
Williams positively shines in this role, as does a supporting cast that includes Bob Balaban, Alan Arkin, Armin Mueller-Stahl, and Liev Schreiber. The script, adapted by French writing/directing team Peter Kassovitz and Didier Decoin from the original 1974 East German film, is full of expressive Yiddish slang and wonderfully dry Jewish humor, colorful idioms which deserve to be aired out more often. In doing so, Jakob the Liar effectively depicts human beings in impossibly oppressive circumstances trying trying to hold onto some shred of humanity while unimaginable brutality goes on all around them. A-
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