City of Thieves

Roberto Benigni once begged us to believe that the murders of millions and the subjugation and torture of millions of others in World War II couldn’t dim the pure at heart who loved to laugh. It made for a sweet movie, but all of the Oscar seat–jumping in the world couldn’t convince us of its veracity. Now comes author/screenwriter Benioff, who tackled the aftermath of September 11 in his debut novel, The 25th Hour, with a WWII buddy book in which a mismatched pair sets off on an adventure through the depressed Leningrad of the mid-20th century.

At the opening, a young actor/screenwriter begs off a magazine assignment to write about his own life and interviews his grandfather about his time during the war. The grandfather, Lev Beniov, is reticent at first, preferring to leave the past to the past, but eventually opens up about his time there. Lev then picks up the narrative, telling of the time he saw a dead German paratrooper sinking out of the air, just down the street from his home. Flouting curfew, he finds the trooper and pilfers the flask of liquor he finds on the dead man’s body. That’s enough to get you arrested in wartime Russia, and soldiers promptly find him and toss him into a cell with Kolya, a bookish smart-ass arrested for desertion. Enough ominous air occupies the cell that Kolya and Lev need not guess at their fates: In the morning, they’ll likely be executed.

But a colonel with a soft spot for his domineering daughter wants to bake her a big birthday cake, and he needs two thieves to find a dozen eggs in Leningrad, a city under such tight rationing that it’s doubtful the eggs even exist. Lev and Kolya have six days to pull it off.

The Benigniness of City of Thieves works the same way it did in Life Is Beautiful: Benioff is able to create an exciting, small story that touches on the horrors of war while keeping it amusing and palatable. The value of that, of course, is debatable.