Art is powerful. It can make both true and false imaginings seem real. Both “Uncle Tom’s Cabin” and the “Communist Manifesto” changed the world—in opposite ways; art without goodness is dangerous.
For 70 years the Holocaust has commanded our most serious attention. Hitler’s concentration camps have stood for the greatest of human depravities. They force us to confront the most serious questions human consciousness ever must address: Is there justice? Why do the innocent suffer? What is the nature of evil? Does God exist? Since this can happen, what—really—are we?
Then along came Roberto Benigni with a sweet little movie about a father’s imaginative and self-sacrificial love for his son. So great is that love, says the film, that it can save his son from the Holocaust—not only from death, but from all effects of suffering and evil. The boy will grow up grateful to his father for having preserved his innocence from taint and him from pain….