Life Certainly Is Beautiful For Benigni

It was one of, if not the most, bizarre acceptance speech the traditionally conservative Oscar crowd had ever seen. Exuberant Italian actor Roberto Benigni danced across the backs of chairs and hopped up the stage steps before accepting his history-making Academy award for Best Actor for his part in [Life Is Beautiful](/reviews/review.asp? 4194). Then, rather than break down in tears or harp on about artistic merit, he chose to utter the timeless line at the podium, "This is a terrible mistake, because I used up all my English!" The best was yet to come. The first time a foreign star of a foreign language film has ever won the award, Benigni went on to give a memorable performance saying, "I'm not able to express all my gratitude. Now my body is in tumult. It is a colossal moment of joy... I would like to be Jupiter and kidnap everybody and lie down in the firmament making love to everybody. Grazie, grazie, America, land of a lotta things. I don't deserve this. But I hope to win some other Oscars" Quite. Written and directed by Benigni, Life is Beautiful - criticised for trivialising the Holocaust by using comedy - also won best foreign film and the award for dramatic musical score. The film follows an Italian Jew and his young son into a Nazi concentration camp. Benigni, as the father, protects his young boy by pretending the whole experience is a big game with prizes awarded for not crying and not giving voice to hunger. On receiving his first award of the night for Best Foreign Film, Benigni exclaimed, "This is a moment of joy, and I want to kiss everybody. I feel like now, really, to dive in this ocean of generosity" as announcer Sophia Loren wept in the background and Goldie Hawn bawled her eyes out in the audience. Thanking his parents for the gift of poverty, he continued, "How do you say, it's the hailstorm of kindness of gratitude for you,'' enthused Benigni, whose sheer presence and unrivalled animation brought an oft-hard to please Oscar audience to their feet. Life Is Beautiful has become the highest-grossing foreign language film in North American history and earned Italy its 10th Oscar and first place in the Oscar tally for any foreign country. Benigni became the first filmmaker in a staggering 50 years - since Sir Laurence Olivier and Hamlet - to direct his own Oscar-winning performance. Arguably Italy's most famous living actor, he has worked for directors such as Costa-Gavras, Federico Fellini and Jim Jarmusch. Despite his Joe Dolce-like accent and accentuated body language, Benigni was perfectly understood when he acknowledged those who died in the Holocaust. "I want to thank those who are not here, who gave their lives so that we can say 'Life Is Beautiful'"