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THE TIGER AND THE SNOW Send This Review to a Friend
This Italian import directed by Roberto Benigni is among the worst films of the year. It is silly and boring, as is Benigni’s acting this time around. I have liked much of his other work, such as “Life Is Beautiful,” “The Monster” and “Johnny Stecchino,” but “The Tiger and the Snow, also starring Benigni and co-scripted by Benigni and Vincenzo Cerami, tries one’s patience.
Benigni portrays Attilio, a poetry professor who is in love with the resistant Vittoria, played by the director’s lovely real-life wife, Nicoletta Braschi. The screenplay manages to get Vittoria to Baghdad in the midst of the Iraq fighting. She is injured and in a coma. Ta-da! Benigni moves heaven and earth to go to the rescue and organizes help for her. Comatose until her recovery, she’ll never know who her savior was. Or will she?
The director-actor mixes comedy, such as his mounting a camel, with efforts at lyricism, and presumably he is trying to say that love and the human spirit triumphs over war and dehumanization. But all he ends up with this time is a mess. Tom Waits has a supporting role as a wedding singer. A Strand Releasing release.
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