Synopsis
Life is beautiful is a two-part movie set in the 1940s. The first part involves bliss, romance and happiness in comedic fashion. The latter part is more melancholic, depicting the struggles faced by a Jewish Italian, Guido, his son, Giosue and his aristocrat-descended non-Jewish wife, Dora, during the Holocaust in World War II.
Plot
The movie begins pre World War II with Guido, a Jewish Italian, moving to the Tuscan city of Arezzo with the intention of opening a bookstore. In the meantime, he works for his uncle as a waiter. In a comedic series of fortunate circumstances, he falls for Dora, a school teacher, who is from a well-to-do non-Jewish family of aristocrats. Despite the odds against him, he manages to woo her into marrying him instead of her arrogant fiancé. They have a happy marriage for the most part and after some time, they have a son, Giosue. Guido also manages to open his bookstore. The happy days, however, are short lived.
The second part of the film is set during World War II. Guido, Giosue and Guido’s uncle, due to their Jewish descent, are forced onto a train bound for a Nazi concentration camp. Dora, however, who is of non-Jewish descent, demands to be sent to the same camp as her family. Guido does not reveal the truth about the circumstances to his son, not wanting to frighten him, and pretends that it is all part of a game. He goes to the extent of risking the fury of the Nazi guards, by mistranslating the rules of the camp on purpose, broadcasting to all his fellow prisoners that it is a game as well even though they obviously do not fall for it. He convinces his son that if he follows the rules of the game, he will win the grand prize of a tank. Guido keeps the performance up despite the daily hardships and suffering he goes through in the concentration camp.
Towards the end of the war, the Nazis running the concentration camp are in disarray due to the impending victory of the Allied forces. Guido convinces Giosue to hide in an enclosed box, telling him that he would win the tank if he could stay in the box until the area was clear. Shortly after, in an attempt to locate his wife, he is caught by Nazi guards and shot dead. Giosue, unaware of his father’s death, is ecstatic when an American tank rolls into the camp, believing that he had really won the tank. The Americans then reunite Giosue with Dora.
At the end, the audience finds out that the film is narrated by an adult Giosue, telling the story of his father’s sacrifice for him.
Themes
The more prominent themes in ‘Life is Beautiful’ involve sacrifice, as well as human traits such as bravery and innocence. The audience is told flat out that Guido sacrificed his own life as a result of the extent he went in order to protect his son, which also overlaps with bravery. The second part of the film is based entirely on sacrifice; about how Guido shielded his son from the truth of the brutality and devastation in the concentration camp, despite knowing well that the Nazi guards would not hesitate to end his life at the slightest bit of defiance. Bravery goes hand in hand with sacrifice here. Guido’s bravery, spurred on by his intent of protecting Giosue, is what enabled him to sacrifice so much for his son. His bravery is also what helped him to snatch Dora away on a horse when she was about to be married to her arrogant fiancé. Innocence is also an important theme in this movie. The innocence of a child is the only thing that would have believed the story that Guido cooked up about a concentration camp being part of a game. Giosue was, for the most part, shielded from animosity such as that of Nazi Germany. Thus his naivety in taking in his father’s lie of the camp being part of a game is largely believable.
Characters
The three main characters are the protagonist Guido, his wife, Dora and his son Giosue.
Guido
Guido is a highly imaginative man, able to think out of the box in order to achieve things. When they first met, he impressed Dora with his manipulation of his surrounding world, making it seem like he was a magician able to anticipate things that were about to happen. He has a very strong sense of family, which is more evident in the latter half of the story, inside the concentration camp. He uses his bravery and imagination to the fullest extent in order to protect Giosue from the harsh realities of the camp. He did not want his son to be frightened by the circumstances, instead preferring to shield his son from the truth, by pretending that the entire situation was just a game. He did not even show any emotion when his uncle was sent to the gas chambers, knowing that his son was watching. Instead, he lied that it was because his uncle was on a different team. Even towards the end, when he was probably aware of his inevitable death, he made light of it, knowing that his son was still watching him.
Dora
The one thing that stands out about Dora is her judge of character. During those days, many people still strongly believed in the superiority of an Aryan race. Despite her wealthy, aristocratic background, she never showed any prejudice towards Guido, and eventually married him. Even though it caused a rift between her mother and her, she did not adopt the superiority complex. She is also extremely family oriented and strong. Nothing else can explain why she demanded to be sent to the same concentration camp as her family when her non-Jewish background was deemed acceptable under Nazi rule.
Giosue
Innocence is the first thing that springs to mind about Giosue. The pure untainted child-like innocence that believed the lies his father told him about the camp being part of a gigantic game. Even before the war, the audience is shown how Giosue is shielded from the animosities of the world, when his father lies to him about the “No Jews allowed” sign in the shop window and Giosue believes his quickly-concocted story. Although at the end of the movie, the audience finds out that Giosue eventually grew up knowing the sacrifice his father made for him, and that he did not take his father’s sacrifice for granted.
Character Relationships
The family relationship between Guido, Dora and Giosue is an extremely strong one. They are very close-knit, trusting and protective of one another. It is evident in several incidents such as Dora’s insistence to join her family in the concentration camp, Guido’s constant protection of Giosue while in the concentration camp, as well as Giosue’s absolute trust towards his father’s words. Guido, especially, was protective of his family, putting both Giosue and Dora before his own safety. Before he died, he made sure that Giosue was safe, before attempting to find Dora, getting caught in the process. He could have simply saved himself and waited for the American liberation and yet, he wanted to ensure that his family was safe.
Critique
Having watched the movie twice now, I would have to admit that I find the movie quite distasteful. I generally have this very stereotypical dislike for movies that make light of situations such as the Holocaust. Granted, the movie wasn’t about the harsh realities of World War II and the Nazi rule but rather about love and family ties and sacrifice, I just feel that things like these can be depicted in so many ways that don’t involve taking the most destructive genocide in the recent century and turning it into a semi comedic fashion in order to portray love and sacrifice.
It is one of those movies that tug at the heartstrings of the audience when watching it in real time. I mean, it is truly a heart-wrenching story of a father who sacrificed his life to protect his son. Yet it is the fashion that the movie is made in that really irks me when I analyse it post-movie. People may argue that the world has enough depressing movies made about the devastation and impact of World War II and that this movie makes a nice change from the typical war movies. I disagree. It was a devastating event in world history, and the movie actually involves Guido making a joke of the concentration camp to protect his son. It just feels extremely unrealistic to me. It could be the mindset that has been implanted in my head from absorbing all the various war movies of recent times, but a more likely scenario would have been Guido being shot right at the start for being so blatantly defiant to the Nazi soldiers.
Although, to the less sceptical population (possibly the majority of people) out there, I’m sure the movie was generally enjoyable and well-made. Otherwise, it wouldn’t have attained three Academy Awards in 1999.
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