Life Is Beautiful - Movie Review

The story of Life is Beautiful starts off in 1931, with an introduction to Guido who enters a small Italian town. Guido is a poor Jewish man who has all the joy in the world and he wants to become a bookseller. Alongside becoming a bookseller, Guido wants Dora, a school teacher who literally fell out of a window, into his arms. After his first acquaintance with Dora, Guido begins to woo her using his most prominent talent; Guido is a liar, to put it simply. The largest and most important part of his gift is the fact that he believes his own lies himself. His one true goal is to bend the world to fit his wants, which makes life beautiful, no matter the situation in which he will find himself.

Consisting two parts, the movie is initially romantic, gentle, and it has an abundance of pratfalls, which create a great comedic aspect. When anything bad enters the picture, it is merely ridiculed and mocked. Eventually, though, in the second half of the movie, when true evil is introduced, Guido is forced to lie about the world again. He has to make it out to be better than it truly is, in order to keep his son from the cruelty of the world. Even more so, though, he lies to convince himself that the events going on around him are not really happening. He was a Jewish man, taken away from his life and put into a concentration camp, so that he would eventually die. He had done nothing wrong, but the fact that he was Jewish was all the “reason” needed to kill him and his loved ones.

Benigni sacrifices historical accuracy to get the plot of his story across to the audience. There were concentration camps where the men were forced into intense labour, but in no way would the men have acted as loosely as Guido had acted. If the authority and security of the camps had caught someone acting in the way that Guido did, they would have more than likely killed him on the spot. Also, when Guido steps up in the bedroom, when the officer asks if anyone is able to translate German to Italian, he is simply goofy, which would have never been the way someone would have acted in during the Holocaust.

Despite the fact that the historical accuracy is slightly off, Benigni creates a great storyline and evokes so many various emotions with his use of compassion within Guido’s family, along with the sheer depressing traits of the camp. What truly won me over was how Guido made life truly beautiful in his eyes, as well as the eyes of his son. He makes the camp out to be a game to his son, where he has to gain 1,000 points to pass through to the next level. This playful attitude makes it much less scary for his son and it helps Guido to take the tough times life less seriously and in a less harsh manner. The conclusion of the movie is pretty hard to deal with, but simultaneously, it is heart-warming to see the son back with his mother, and to know that Guido would not have regretted giving up his life for his family. The love he has for his family is not cliché or “corny,” but it’s genuine and sweet, which is the type of love we want to see in movies, because it’s the kind to which we, ourselves, are able to relate.

The film is most definitely on my list of my top five favourite movies. I first saw it when I was about eight and I fell in love with the story. Even though the basic plot is a bit intense for a large amount of people, it shows the compassion and love that real people have for one another. It shows a man who lies to make life better, which I would usually look down upon, but it makes life for his family and him much more positive than it could have turned out to be. All in all, the movie is worth while and presents a horrifying part of history in a relatively positive light. We all experience bad things in our lives, but why not describe them as being good?