Hell is Beautiful?

The Inferno, the first of the three-part allegory of a search for God (Hell, Purgatory, Paradise), is the most popular, Benigni said, “because it’s human, it’s deep, it convinces us of how horrible we can be and we can recognize ourselves”. But the Paradiso, he says, “represents the highest that man can reach’’.

Benigni explains: “In Dante, there is mystery and poetry, it’s entertaining, and he shows us all the human passions… In Dante we find all the techniques of cinema…He invented the rapid movement, all the techniques of narrating a story, of set design, and film editing. He is so modern you jump off your seat — special effects, he invented them!’’

The show segues smoothly toward Dante, through a sketch that illustrates a nearly lost tradition he picked up from his native small town in Tuscany, where locals compete in demonstrating their virtuosity in verse.

From there he sheds the comedian’s skin and begins his introduction to The Divine Comedy, with the line that every Italian knows by heart: “Nel mezzo del cammin di nostra vita, mi ritrovai per una selva oscura, che la diritta via era smarrita (Midway in the journey of life, I woke to find myself in a dark wood, where the right road was wholly lost and gone).”

In some ways he would like to bring Dante to the United States because Dante is under appreciated and badly represented, he said: “He is portrayed as old, Catholic, imperialist and medieval.” But when Americans do understand him, he said in typical Benigniesque hyperbole, “they fall in love until death. It’s like seeing a cherry tree when it blossoms.”
Sarah Delaney (LAT-WP)