‘Life Is Beautiful’ Review: An Upbeat Self-Portrait of a Palestinian Stranded in the Far North
variety.comDennis Harvey Film Critic Feel-good stories out of Gaza are not exactly plentiful at present, making “Life Is Beautiful” something of an anomaly.
Though the predicament depicted — Palestinian filmmaker Mohamed Jabaly’s unplanned long exile due to closed borders and political shifts — is hardly upbeat in outline, his ebullient personality insists on emphasizing humor and warmth.
Thus this chronicle of a one-month visit to Norway that drags on for seven years ends up an incongruously charming footnote to a much larger conflict that just keeps escalating.
Jabaly’s doc will appeal to programmers looking for something that touches on its backgrounding issues without being “divisive.” By the same token, however, this likable first-person documentary seems almost too apolitically innocuous for this fraught moment in time.
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