A reflection on the movie Life is Beautiful: classicist concepts of humanism, realism, and idealism - Essay Example

In the movie Life is Beautiful, Guido Orefice is a normal, healthy Italian man who finds a woman he falls in love with (Dora) and then has a son, Giosu. Unfortunately, this happy family gets swept away to a concentration camp with the German occupation of Italy.The father, Guido, tries to make his son think that they are playing a game-and Guido successfully hides his son with the other prisoners so he will not be gassed. The movie Life is Beautiful exudes elements of Classicism, those exhibited being humanism, realism, and idealism.

Humanism is a form of examining the way life actually is for people. "Early humanists returned to the classics less with nostalgia or awe than with a sense of deep familiarity, an impression of having been brought newly into contact with expressions of an intrinsic and permanent human reality."1 Life is Beautiful has some particularly humanistic aspects in its storyline. For example, the fact that Guido falls in love is a very compelling humanistic notion. It is concrete, a valid human experience, and an entity to which many people may be able to relate.

Realism is an element that is used very well in Life is Beautiful. "The initial definition of realismorients us towards what we might call the 'referential' dimension of realism: how does this representation measure up to what we expect, or what a film might help us discover about the real world"2 One of the realistic elements of the film is the details that are given about the war. One knows that it can be cold during the war in winter, that the concentration camps retained an aura of hopelessness and helplessness, and that life could take drastic turns in a matter of minutes for a small family that was struggling to carve a life out for itself.

War is portrayed in a realistic and somber way. The guards in the movie are harsh people, the prisoners are a disheartened but slightfully jokey bunch, and people try to make the best of their situations-just as one might expect in real life. Guido himself is somewhat of a dreamer. He fell in love and got married to his sweetheart, who was actually engaged to another man. However, because of his whimsical charms and winning way, Guido and Nora became an inseparable couple. Guido, in his own world, so to speak-even jokes with a friend about the signs on storefronts saying "No Jews Allowed," telling his friend that they will put up a sign that says they will not allow people or things they don't like in their store too.

Guido said they would put up a sign that said, "No spiders or Visigoths allowed." It was a joke, but rather a temporary escape from reality-idealism, if one wills-that the true reality of the situation was that Jews were being hauled away off the streets simply because the Nazi regime was trying to eliminate the Jewish race from the planet. Later on, in the concentration camp, Guido even tries to continue this ingnue even after Guido and his son have been taken to the concentration camp. Guido says (while carrying his song through the camp), "You are such a good boy.

You sleep now. Dream sweet dreams. Maybe we are both dreaming."3 In this manner, Guido is trying to look at their imprisonment with the viewpoint that perhaps everything they are experiencing in the concentration camp is a dream. Obviously, he knows this is not the case, however, it is a survival tactic Guido uses in order to continue striving to keep on living. As such, Guido makes up a "game" in order to keep his son occupied, making the young boy imagine that he must not cry, ask for more food, or call for his mother in order to garner points.

The father, Guido, promises his son that once the boy reaches 1,000 points, he will get a real military tank (not just a toy). It is with this imaginative spirit that Guido and his son temporarily suspend the horrible realities of the concentration