A Road Less Travelled

I have recently discovered that I am a hopeless romantic. I love watching people fall in love; I love watching people who are in love. I like watching the awkward newly-weds and I like watching the sweet old couple. I don’t like the genre of Romance, but I delight in love stories.

Last week I watched a truly great love story movie. The Italian movieThe Tiger and the Snow was co-written, directed and starred in by Roberto Benigni who also co-wrote, directed and starred in Life is Beautiful.

Roberto Benigni plays Attilo de Giovanni a professor of poetry in Rome. He’s vague, scatter-brained and excited about everything he does. Every night he dreams he is getting married to a beautiful woman, the woman of his dreams. And then at a poetry reading he meets this woman, Vittoria who is played by Roberto Benigni’s wife, Nicoletta Braschi. We find out that they have some history, but the movie doesn’t tell us what. He tries to have a romantic evening with Vittoria, but she slips away. He shows up at her house to tell her he won’t bother her anymore, that he’s through with her. Unless she doesn’t want that, of course. She just laughs and then gets on a plane for Baghdad where she’s collaborating on a book with another poet, a mutual friend of hers and Attilo. Attilo’s life goes on without her until he gets a phone call from his friend in Baghdad. The U.S. have just invaded. There was an explosion. Vittoria is dying. Attilo drops everything and rushes to her side.

The rest of the movie is this vague, scatter-brained poet in a war-zone trying to save a dying woman. The hospital doesn’t have the medicine she needs so he has to go hack something together that will work. Then she needs oxygen so he has to go find some while the bombs fall. And then, and then…. He never gives up and he never stops being excited and excitable. She needs him, so he’s there even if she doesn’t love him back. It’s wonderfully romantic. And then there’s a twist at the end.

The movie was delightful. When I saw a preview I thought it looked charming both for the story and the cinematography. The movie takes the time at the beginning to make us know Attilo. We see him with his daughters at a circus, we see him teaching a class, we see him being late to almost everything. He has almost exactly the same dream every single night. So when he gets dropped into a different and difficult setting we feel the harshness and his confusion. We get to see a little bit of how Attilo looks at the world by seeing what he focuses on and how he reacts. And since the main characters are all poets the dialogue is delightfully worded at times. It’s poetic without being flowery.

I give this movie four and a half out of five stars. It doesn’t get five stars because, well, I don’t like saying that things are perfect. I heartily recommend this movie if you, like me, can’t resist a good love story.