Life Is Beautiful by Roberto Benigni - Movie Review Example

Reflection Paper on the Movie "Life is Beautiful" Made by Roberto Benigni Since the genocide that caused the deaths of millions of Jews in the Second World War, many movies have been to represent to, and help audiences observe and in a way share the experiences of those in both sides of the war. Most of them have focused on the fighting and genocide of the Jews, painting, and appropriately so, a grim picture of the realities; a movie like Escape from Sobibor is an archetype of the grim nature of holocaust productions. However, very few if any have ever dared to tell the story from a comic angle, indeed most of the humor in holocaust movies is the graveside sort that is more likely to evoke ironic tears that laughter. That was until Roberto Benigni came along with his movie life is beautiful and attempted to tell the story of genocide and murder through the eyes of a child narrator and the antics of an adorable, funny and somewhat unhinged father. The movie Life is Beautiful by Roberto Benigni was hailed as a creative and artistic masterpiece by some and criticized by others for trying to trivialize the seriousness, horror and torture that were the engenderment of the holocaust. Nevertheless, it was highly feted and won awards in several categories such as best music, original dramatic score best foreign language and for his role Benigni won the best actor, this is in addition to academy award nominations in directing and best picture. In this movie, Benigni attempts to represent a picture of the holocaust in a comic way, he does this, not by trivializing or even diluting the events as some critics have claimed but by using Guido, who is by nature a comedian who tries to use humor to help his son and himself cope with the evils of the genocide. Plot of the movie is revolved around on Guido a young charismatic and ambitious Jewish Italian who is caught up in the wave of Anti-Semitism that results in him and his wife and son being dragged off to a concentration camp. The main focus of the story is his attempt to shield his son and to some extent himself from the harsh realities of the camp so that he may not suffer psychologically by deceiving him it is a just a game. The movie is divided in two parts, the first is the introduction which sets the background for the plot and introduces the characters in the period before holocaust begun to be felt in Italy, herein; Guido, is as a young man with ambitions of starting a book shop. He is living with his uncle and working as a waiter; he is full of mischief and has an adventurous and comic streak in him that fills that movie with slapstick scenes and jokes that leave the viewer laughing with and at him. He falls in love with a school teacher who is already engaged and manages to steal her form her betrothed by “rescuing” her in a true quixotic and romantic fashion from her enjoyment party while riding on a horse. They get married and have son and for a period, they lead a peaceful and idyllic life. This is however despite the evidence of segregation and xenophobia that has become more intense with time, shops are covered with signs of “No Jews Allowed” or Jews and Dogs not allowed”. However even with anti-Semitism all around them, Guido tries to protect his son from the truth by making up all sorts of explanations to show him that the signs meant everything expect what they actually meant. In the second part is when the family comes face to face with the horrors of the holocausts and genocide which the Nazis had visited upon the Jews, during the war period, Jews were taken to camps in droves and from there they would either be put to work or gassed in showers if they were too young, old or unfit to work. When they are taken, away Dora is absent and when she comes home and finds them gone, she follows them to the train and insists to be allowed to board the train with her family despite the fact that she was not Jewish. It is at the camp that the family comes face to face with genocide in the form of mass executions of men and children in gas chambers. However, the tragic comic elements of the movie were manifested in the fact that in the same deceitful way Guido hid the truth from Joshua’s eyes about the shop signs, he turned the whole camp business into one big game. When his uncle is sent to another barrack from where he will ultimately fall victim to the murderous Germans, Guido tells Joshua that he is being moved to a different team. Guido takes advantage of the Germans ignorance of Italian to interpreted the instructions and threats of death at very corner should the prisoners try to escape for the benefit of his son. He tells him the camp is game in which they are all working to win a 1000 points the reward for which is a real tank, he say that people will lose marks if they cry for their mother, demand a snack or fall hungry. All this is done to sanitize the effects of the death and suffering which is taking place in the camp. In some of the most atrocious instances of genocide in modern history, thousand s of children were executed in camps as they were seen as an unnecessary expense. Thus when many of the children were taken away and executed in the “showers” Guido explains to the baffled Joshua who can’t find his playmates; that they are hiding to increase their chances of winning. Finally, as the Americans rush to liberate the camp, Guido is caught and executed by a German soldier while looking for his wife just a day before the camp was liberated in what can be seen as a parallel to a Shakespearean tragedy. Unequivocally, any movie or indeed art dealing with the holocaust period would be incomplete if it completely ignored the genocide that characterized the period, thus despite the comic aspects of life is beautiful, it explores the atrocities in its own unique way. It is said that one of the reasons why it was so easy for the Nazis to drive Jews into concentration camps and gradually enslave and massacre them was because many did not believe it was possible for it to happen. This denial is what made the genocide take place with hardly any resistance from the many Jews who could not imagine such slaughters could be possibly occasioned on them. Thus the theme of genocide is brought out albeit covertly by Guido’s effort to disguise it by attempting to cloak it in a childish game not only for his son but also for himself. However despite his attempts to conceal it, it is only hidden from the boy but in his mind he knows just as well as the audience that there is death all around, the sons ignorance on the other hand serves to enhance dramatic irony and to create an avenue through which the comic attempts of the father to shield him from the inevitable may emerge. Dora from the women’s barracks learns that children and old women are being executed and Joshua’s uncle walks to his death with a shrug. Not because he did not care, but because it had become so commonplace that he, like many others simply accepted it as inevitable and dint even bother to put up a fight. Perhaps the most gruesome image of the genocide that was taking place in the back and front ground could be the vehemently disputed claim that people bones and fat were being used to make soap and buttons. Guido disputes this as preposterous , who, he wonders scornfully would do such a thing, while it may or may not have been happening, there was no doubt that Jews were being decimated in such high numbers as to give such a claim some credence. Other images in the movie that bring out the brutal reality of the times included the scene in which Dora comes upon a mound of entangled corpses who had been executed by the Germans and left to decompose. A kitten is crawling over a pile of discarded clothing; presumably belonging to a child who had been gasses and whose body was probably among the pile that had given Dora the horrors. The image of the entangled bodies is a rude awakening to the fact that the world in which Guido and his family was nothing like the stories he was telling his son. It reminds the audience that despite the comic elements in the movie, the holocaust was real and genocide was the order of the day. Ultimately, while there are those who still feel that employing comedy and humor to enact a holocaust themed movie is in bad taste, there is no doubt that Benigni was greatly successful in proving that even in the midst of suffering and genocide, there is hope of preserving innocence, furthermore, humor is after all a natural human condition; despite tribulations, there are those who choose to look at the brighter side of life. Works Cited Life Is Beautiful. Dir: Roberto Benigni. MiraMax Home Entertainment, 1997, Movie. Read More