Children caught in the crossfire of global conflicts and impressionable impact on their innocent minds form the focus of delectable twin visits to cinema slated by Suchitra Film Society this Thursday and Friday. If one is a serious, scintillating debutant look at the what ravages of war can wreak upon an young mind, the other, an Oscar-winner, is an endearing comic, yet concerned take at the turbulent topic that still dogs global amphi-theatre.
Based on a novella by Vladimir Bogomolov and scripted by renowned Russian auteur Andrei Tarkovsky and his friend Andrei Mikhalkov-Konchalovsky Ivan’s Childhood / My Name is Ivan, is Tarkovsky’s debut.
It recounts the story of a boy-soldier, transformed into moribund robot, who works as an agent for Soviet partisans during WW-II after his family has been slaughtered by Nazi soldiers. The 1962 Golden Lion Winner is built around the contrast between the young boy’s idyllic dreams of his pre-war past and his grim wartime existence. Austere, minimalist, it is an evocative, poetic journey through shadows and shards of boy’s war-ravaged youth that brings to fore traumatic realities of WW-II and serene moments of family life before the conflict began. As Tarkovsky’s observes of his oeuvre “I sought to establish whether or not I had it in me to be a director.” No wonder Sweden’s film-maker Ingmar Bergman described Tarkovsky as “the greatest filmmaker” adding “when I discovered the first films of Tarkovsky, it was a miracle.”
Using slapstick and satire to glorious effect with Chaplenisque charm, Roberto Benigni’s unusual fairy tale Life is Beautiful is on one hand, is light, airy, and silly romantic comedy and on the other, a stark social commentary on hellish life during Holocaust and WW-II, when the film’s Jewish Italian writer–waiter must learn how to use his fertile imagination to help his son survive their internment in a Nazi concentration camp. Alternately harrowing and funny Benigni uses games and humour to shield his young son from the surrounding horrors.
Life is Beautiful is a moving and touching tale of a father’s sacrifice to save not just his son’s life but also his innocence in the face of one of the most evil acts ever perpetrated by the human race.
Screenings on November 22 and 23 at 6.45 pm, Suchitra, 36 B V Karanth Road, Banashankari II Stage. For details call: 26711785.
