Life is Beautiful Blog

      In ELA we recently did our Holocaust unit. After finishing a memoir written by a Holocaust survivor we watched a movie titled Life is Beautiful. You might be wondering how life could be beautiful if he movie was about the Holocaust, even watching the first 30 minutes of the movie you would have no idea that it was focused around the Holocaust. Although the basis of the movie is based on the Holocaust it seems to portray time and time again how life is beautiful even in terrible times like the Holocaust.

      The first sign you would see is falling in love. Less than 10 minutes into the movie Guido, the main, meets Dora, the “lover”.  Despite them only seeing once he persisted to find her and go out with her on a date. You can tell Dora also wants to see Guido again but, unfortunately at the time she is engaged to a man that Guido has wronged. One of the times Guido sees Dora again is when she is to be married and I believe they were at the rehearsal dinner when Guido sees Dora and she tells him to take her away. That line alone shows how life is beautiful, of course Dora has to leave her fiancé but she loves Guido and she wants to be with him.

      Not only does she love Guido but even though he and Joshua were being taken away and she knew it was bad she went with them to be with her family. When Dora makes the realization that Guido and Joshua were being taken away she rushed to the train station to keep them with her. She told the conductor that they had it wrong, that her husband and son shouldn’t be on the train, after being refused she persisted to be let into the train instaid of staying safe she decided to risk her life to
be with her family. To me, that takes much bravery but it also shows how life is beautiful. It is beautiful how someone would essentially give their life to be with their family and that their love for
them overthrew the fact that they could die.

     The next thing I found that makes life beautiful is actually two combined. One thing we don’t think of a lot when we hear “how is life beautiful?” Is kids having innocence and their people trying to keep that innocence. In Life is Beautiful Guido and Joshua are taken and separated from their home and family and they don’t know what’s going on. Once Guido finds out he tries to keep Joshua’s innocence by telling him that it’s a game and saying that they have to earn points in order to win a “real” tank. Time and time again Guido tells Joshua that they have to win the game or they are so close to winning to keep him happy and safe from what could happen to him if he would have known where they were. Due to Guido’s love for Joshua, Guido made sure Joshua was safe, because of Guido, Joshua was able to survive and see his mom again. Not only is it beautiful that Joshua kept his innocence and happiness due to his father but he was able to reunite with his mother after a long time apart.

    Going into how Night by Elie Wiesel and Life is Beautiful are similar and different I have one specific example that stuck out to me after racking my brain for things that made them similar or different. In Night they are given several warnings about the Nazis and they are told stories about what they’ve done but no one seems to believe that it could be true or it could happen to them. Essentially they had no idea what was going on outside of their home. About the same thing happened in Life is Beautiful because it was shown that Guido and his father were Jews and that
people didn’t like that. In this case there weren’t any stories about what was to come but it proves that they had no idea what was going to happen, just like the people in Night.

   The next thing I want to address is the difference of the mood in Night and Life is Beautiful. Life is Beautiful has a very uplifting and humorous mood and it really shows how life is beautiful, if you just watched the first half an hour of the film you wouldn’t know it’s a Holocaust movie. Meanwhile, Night almost immediately gets to the main focus of the memoir and Elie shares his story. Because
 Life is Beautiful  has a beginning that makes the movie seem like it is romantic comedy it seems the mood for the rest of the movie. Night doesn’t portray the comedic sense theat Life is Beautiful gives to its watchers and makes people hate what the Nazis did to them more than you felt in Life is Beautiful.

   There are countless reasons how Life is Beautiful shows how life is beautiful and how Night and Life is Beautiful compare to each other. If I had more time I would keep adding the other reasons I had, but unfortunately I don’t. The paragraphs aren’t the longest and they don’t all follow a TIQA format but I did my best and got it done. I don’t know how to end it so I guess I’ll ask “did you enjoy it”? I honestly don’t know what I’m doing. Bye!