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FUTURES

Futures 39 (2007) 453–457

Film

A futuristic discussion on antediluvian concepts

through Benigni’s ‘La tigre e la neve’

Mert Bilgin

International Relations Department, Dogus University, Istanbul, Turkey

Available online 18 October 2006

Developments in science and technology allow futurists to predict the forthcoming living

conditions. In fact, it is possible to forecast the future by looking at recent technological

brake through, varying from genetics to cold fusion. For instance, one can easily propose

that humanity is increasing the speed of everything within a more diversified world.

However, this argument per se indicates the controversial enrichment of contemporary

society. On the one hand, increase in the speed shows that there is still a modernisttendency which carries out the enlightenment heritage in the form of progress. On the

other hand, this speed contributes to diversification of everything [1] which for some

scholars represents time and space compression [2], for others the demise of grand

narratives for a more pluralistic world [3].

Moreover, there is still one, perhaps the oldest, factor which gains the future its

controversial characteristic and makes it almost impossible to clearly envisage the

evolution of sense and sensibility. Individuals are born in a life where science and

technology have already been created and developed. Naturally, the new comer uses and

manipulates science and technology, and the principles of domination obtained out of 

them, long before than being able to fully comprehend his/her interaction with the outside

world. This discrepancy creates the most significant modernist controversy because

individual’s mentality meets advanced skills of science and technology before it can

develop its personality beyond sub-conscious constraints, super-egoist pressures and egoist

demands. This is why futuristic forecasting is being challenged by thawing world that

impedes to envisage the quintessence of the next generations. Ironic, as it seems, one can

easily talk about science, technology and their symbiotic influences upon economic and

political structure of society without being capable of forecasting the future standing of 

sense and sensibility.

ARTICLE IN PRESS

www.elsevier.com/locate/futures

0016-3287/$ - see front matterr 2006 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

doi:10.1016/j.futures.2006.08.007

E-mail address: mbilgin@dogus.edu.tr.

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In other words, certainty in science and technology is not bringing certainty about the

characteristics of the future. It is not that difficult to predict the outcomes of genetics on

health and cold fusion for a more qualified and perhaps more egalitarian life. But it is

extremely difficult to forecast the future meanings of certain concepts such as love, war,

poetry, devotion for homeland and so on. Will these concepts continue to give the meaningof life in a futuristic world which seems closer every passing day? In fact, this question

reflects a Stoist concern in terms of understanding whether some concepts shall transcend

throughout time and place almost as the Logos of the universe [4]. If someone, somehow,

says yes, this is probably an outcome of his/her loyalty to being human in its organic sense,

which belongs to past and indicates persistence about not changing throughout time.

If someone, somehow, says no, then this probably reflects a hopelessness about humanity’s

incapability to go beyond antagonism or sheer glorification of ego, which also belongs

to past.

There are two controversies related to Stoist understanding of Logos which seem to

represent post-modernist triumph over modernity, but with new controversies. Firstly, one

can suggest that concepts such as love and hope will persist to exist as far as at least one

individual retains them. However, this does not make much sense. The question still exists

because war and hate tend to exist as far as at least one individual keeps them. Secondly,

and within an extreme post-modern perspective, it may be suggested that if we want to

retain some concepts and make them linger through time, this is nothing more than a

restriction upon today’s and future generations, as we impose upon them certain concepts

as universal truths. In other words, making love and hope obligatory, by definition

contradicts the naturalness of these concepts and creates new forms of domination inclined

to create new antagonisms. Indeed futurist ambiguities are outcomes of phenomenalcontroversies, most of which are rooted in the contemporary debate whether solid

definitions of concepts, such as love and morality, are nothing more than restrictions upon

individual freedom, or on the contrary, whether indirect restrictions upon individuals

invoke them the need to reconstruct these concepts like anything else in the world that is

assumed to be fictitious. This is why current clashes are not limited within territorial

boundaries and include a phenomenal war, which seems to be shaped within and between

modernity and post-modernity, [5,6] or to state in other words, between grand narratives

and little narratives. Then the discussion becomes sharpened by another question: Is it

possible to retain and glorify certain concepts, such as love and poetry, without

endangering their constitutive outsides such as war?Within this regard, Robert Benigni’s most recent movie ‘La tigre e la neve’ (The tiger

and the snow, 2005, Italy, available both in English and Italian) deserves the attention of 

the futurists not for its being able to indicate premises about the life modes of the next

generations, but rather because of his intrinsic endeavor to emphasize that certain values

prevail (or shall prevail) through out time and space. This two dimensional facet of 

interaction is present in ‘La tigre e la neve’. On the one hand, a territorial war in its

classical sense is going on in Iraq. On the other hand, a phenomenal war depicting the

resistance of love to prevail both in Rome, representing the peace in West, and in Baghdad,

representing the fire in East, is continuing. The emphasis on love in peace and in war is not

only an exposition of East–West dichotomy, but also a critique against modernity.Meanwhile Benigni’s insistence on love almost as a grand narrative is nothing less than a

sound positioning against post-modernity. Benigni indeed follows a Stoist understanding

and emphasizes love in its classical sense, as a phenomenon which comes into life from

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inwards to outwards and as a natural instinct that is not subject to change according to

external conditions once affiliated with the beloved. A basic discrepancy lies in here

because one can easily ask if love is a prevailing concept that transcends time and place so

does war. Benigni within this sense emancipates modernist restrictions but does not involve

in post-modern impasses. The movie tells that modernist restrictions can not be solvedthrough post-modern controversies, but rather by glorifying the positive aspects of 

modernism per se. In other words, Benigni’s movie puts war and love as prevailing

concepts but does not stress a dialectical relation between them.

This non-dialectical interaction between war and love has already turned out to be

Benignian approach to real life. Roberto Benigni is well known by his movie ‘La vita e `

bella’ (Life is beautiful) in which he had depicted a Nazi concentration camp through

childish eyes. This movie could be best described as amalgamation of adultery world

with what children, or with those who insist on being children, might conceive in order

to remain adhered to living. After this movie, Benigni directed ‘Pinocchio’ through which

he vitalized a journey within children’s world by showing that it could sometimes be

broader than the world we live in. Meanwhile Benigni’s ‘La tigre e la neve’ is not a mere

 juxtaposition of actual life with poetry and love, but a very delicate critique of humanity,

all accompanied by Tom Waits’ delightful music. The emphasis is on the characters, while

the scene is represented by peaceful Rome on the one hand, Baghdad in fire on the other.

This East–West dichotomy is present throughout the movie whereas the purpose of the

director seems to emphasize science, arts, culture and poetry as the incentives that

encourage mutual understanding; and love and faith as incentives of living.

The main text is about the love expressed by an Italian poet, Attilio (Roberto Benigni),1

for Vittoria (Nicoletta Braschi) who is supposed to make an interview with Fuad (JeanReno); an Iraqi poet in exile. Attilio is a lively poet, who also teaches at university and

generally expresses his feelings through comic attitudes. Vittoria (Benigni’s real-life spouse)

is an editor and works with Fuad in order to publish a collection of his works. Fuad is tired

of being away from his home and craves for his country and finally goes back to Baghdad

under occupation. Vittoria also goes to Baghdad to achieve Fuad’s collection. She gets

seriously injured during hard day clashes. Attilio learns about this from Fuad and decides

to go to Baghdad. The flights are suspended and he pretends to be a doctor and finds a

room in a humanitarian aid plane. When he arrives in Baghdad, he learns that Vittoria is

about to die because of the lack of equipment and medicine. The rest of the movie is based

on Attilio’s creative initiatives to save Vittoria alive and depicts what goes on in Iraq alongwith this story.

Benigni misses the point that clashes between civilizations do not exactly represent

human nature and there is the contingency of civilized plurality [7] though the main

argument of the movies is very appropriate for this end. The movie non-ideological stance

may disappoint politically oriented audience as it does not deeply involve in a debate

against Iraqi occupation. This stance can be best explained by his words as an answer to a

similar critique made about his former movie Life is Beautiful [8]:

Also Adorno said, after Auschwitz there can be no poetry, but there is a

contradiction, because life itself is the contradiction. Adorno himself continued to

ARTICLE IN PRESS

1Benigni’s main character is named as Attilio as a tribute to Attilio Bertolucci (1911–2000), a well known poet

and father of famous directors Giuseppe and Bernardo Bertolucci.

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write poems, even though he said this. Now it’s like the verse of a poem, and when

you say only silence, you are saying something. Needless to say, I respect this

tragedy, but I think in order to show proper respect the best thing to do is stay far

away from the reality. I am not able to show violence directly, like Spielberg or

Scorsese, my style is to stay far away, to evoke the horror.

Within this perspective, ‘‘The tiger and the snow’’ tells about different kinds of love by

artificially ornamenting war scene. Benigni makes clear cut differentiation among love for

life, homeland, job, friend, children, husband, wife and so on. This may also be

disappointing for some people who consider love as an end, without making any definition

of it. Benigni’s insistence on sustaining modernist and non-ideological stance decreases the

chance of the movie to be applauded by current festival audience, as well as by award

donors, who have been privileging idiosyncratic identities and micro-politics rather than

universal concepts. This specificity lessens the economic chances of the movie in an era

characterized by value making through signs and images [9]. Benigni, as a very experienced

director, must be aware of this, which puts forward that his insistence on values prevailing

though out time and place is as real as it seems.

The narratives of the movie are quite satisfactory and contributive. In fact, behind its non-

ideological stance, the movie offers subtle critiques of war, modernity, post-modernity,

orientalism and so on. For instance the critique of modernity is explicit in Iraqi scene as

technological development seems to serve for domination and hegemony more than help and

assistance. Reference to post-modernity is implicit and shows itself by the personalities of the

main characters. As a matter of fact, the main characters are textual ordinary subjects, who

carry out textual ordinary lives. At this point, a dialog between Attilio and one of his intimatefriends deserves further attention. Despite Attilio and Vittoria are divorced, Attilio’s love and

affection perpetuate just like prior to their marriage. His sleeps frequently witness the same

dream in which Attilio and Vittoria marry again and again. Unlike Attilio, who frequently

dreams her wife as she is, his friend’s dreams are full of relations and affairs with animal or

animal like creatures which represent real life characters. Sometimes he even sees penguins.

The reference to Freudian psychoanalysis is humorous because Attilio, who has never seen

creatures and penguins up to that time, will see a dream in which his wife would look like a

kangaroo and jump like a kangaroo. The movie also criticizes orientalist dichotomies and put

forward poetry and science as universal phenomena along with Attilio’s love for his wife.

Indeed when Attilio finds out that Vittoria is running out of time, he insists on findinganother cure. This makes Fuad the poet, to think of an old wise Arab, who knows about

traditional medicines. Old knowledge works and gives them time by temporarily curing

Vittoria. Meanwhile we learn that the old Arab has been pretending to be blind after his

wife’s sickness which had created serious damage on her face. This sacrifice is attempting

because he hides that he sees her wife’s face in order to make her less uncomfortable. Humor

is constantly present within the movie. Attilio runs out of oil. To the extent that it is extremely

difficult to find oil in such an oil rich country, he asks help from camels. He steals shoes from

Iraqi vendors who follow him to death but try to rescue Attilio from a mine field. He shouts

as ‘‘I am Italian’’ whenever he becomes arrested by Americans who consider Attilio, carrying

medicines in bags, a suicide bomber. Right after the tragic end of Fuad, Attilio manages tomake his dreams come true.

As mentioned before, Benigni has chosen peaceful Rome and Baghdad in fire on

purpose; first to criticize contemporary dichotomy between West and the rest, then to

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indicate that love may prevail both in good and bad days. But it is not quiet sure whether

he has deliberately chosen Iraq in order to show that just like love war also appears as a

prevailing phenomenon. This choice is very significant because if a director wants to

propose a cultural critique by showing that love and war are prevailing concepts with no

dialectical interaction between them, there would be no better scene than Iraq. In fact, Iraqis the cradle of various civilizations and possesses a very rich cultural heritage including the

Sumerians who invented writing through cuneiform. More interestingly, one should also

note that our knowledge on Sumerian civilization comes from excavation of the temple of 

Inanna; goddess of love and war, who could perfectly symbolize Benigni’s purposes [10]. In

fact, it may be so meaningful to note that the first written love letter dates back 4036 years

ago, as we can understand from poetry carved on a piece of stone by a joyous bride to

Sumerian Shepherd King living in Nippur; a Mesopotamian holy city between Baghdad

and Basra in southern Iraq.2 It could have been meaningful if certain scenes in Baghdad

could include some stories or at least references to Nippur and Inanna. However, there are

no direct references to Inanna throughout the movie, which shows that this goddess of love

and war, symbolizing Iraqi’s cultural heritage, has remained outside of Benigni’s

knowledge on Iraq, as he might have not considered the first written love letter found

around Baghdad not interesting for the movie.

This contravene does not lessen the value of the movie which puts forward authenticity as a

futuristic solution by arriving at the following conclusion: Futures may offer hopes for those

who sustain simplicity of love without involving existentialist quests or post-structural

interrogations. This approach brings out Benignis’s romantic, but to a certain extent realistic,

attitude and proves his willingness not to surrender certain concepts in an era where everything

mingles. So to state shortly; Benigni again privileges love and hope almost as contingentmiracles and he shows that it may even snow on a lion in Rome. He also ornaments this

miracle by a facet of discursive subtexts and narratives all criticizing the mainstream discourse,

which together make this movie worthy of being watched and remembered for at least it shows

the significance some antediluvian phenomena for futures.

References

[1] D. Gilles, Diffe ´ rence et re ´ pe ´ tition, PUF, Paris, 1968.

[2] D. Harvey, The Condition of Postmodernity: An Enquiry into the Origins of Cultural Change, Blackwell,

Oxford, 1990.

[3] D. Gilles, F. Guattari, A Thousand Plateaus, University of Minnesota Press, Minneapolis, 1987.

[4] L. Edelstein, The Meaning of Stoicism, Harvard University Press, Cambridge, 1966.

[5] Z. Sardar, Do not adjust your mind: post-modernism, reality and the other, Futures 25 (8) (1993) 877–893.

[6] Z. Sardar, Terminator 2: modernity, postmodernity and judgement day, Futures 25 (5) (1992) 493–506.

[7] M. Bilgin, On civilized plurality: mapping the clash of civilizations within the market, Futures 38 (3) (2006)

247–260.

[8] A. Wootton, Interview with Roberto Benigni, The Guardian November 7 (1998) /http://zakka.dk/

euroscreenwriters/interviews/roberto_benigni_512.htmS.

[9] S. Lash, J. Urry, Economies of Signs and Space, Sage, London, 1994.

[10] M. Gibson, Nippur—Sacred City of Enlil Supreme God of Sumer and Akkad, Al-Rafida, XIV (1993).

/http://oi.uchicago.edu/OI/PROJ/NIP/PUB93/NSC/NSC.htmlS.

ARTICLE IN PRESS

2Sumerians of this region were the first civilization that used written language. They were advanced with regard

to their mode of life including arts and sciences. This cuneiform which can be considered as first love letter is in

Istanbul Archeological Museum along with other 73,000 Sumerian tablets.

M. Bilgin / Futures 39 (2007) 453–457  457