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Pursuit of a Goal

By Kim W.

It’s an unusual film that begins as a lighthearted romantic comedy and ends with a descent into the hell of WWII concentration camps. With the use of humor and a game, the character Guido Orefice helps his son in the worst of times. It tells the story of an Italian jew, who lives in a romantic fairy tale, but must learn how to use that dreamy quality to survive in a concentration camp.

The first half of the movie is a whimsical, romantic and often slapstick. Guido, a young Italian Jew, arrives in a big city where he sets up a bookstore. Guido is both funny and charismatic, especially when he romances Dora, Italian, but not Jewish, whom he steals at her engagement from her rude and loud fiancé. Several years pass, in which Guido and Dora have a son, Giosuè. After five years, the second World War is in its final days, and Jewish Italian families like Guido’s are the recipients of nonstop persecution. At Giosuè’s birthday, the police break into Guido’s home and take his family into custody. Soon after, they are herded like cattle into a train bound for a nameless concentration camp. It is a place of horror and death, where healthy men and women work all day long melting down metal for weapons while those who are too old, too infirm, or too young to endure hard labor are sent to the showers.

Dora asks to be allowed to join them and is permitted to do so, because she does not wanting to leave her family. Guido is well aware of what is happening, and is determined to shield his son from the terrifying reality of the situation. So he carefully concocts a storyteller’s web of fantasy around Giosuè, informing the boy that this is all part of an elaborate game. In an attempt at keeping up Giosuè’s spirits, Guido convinces him that the camp is just a game in which the first person to get a thousand points is the winner, and the winner gets a real tank, not one of the toys Giosuè is used to playing with. He convinces Giosuè that the camp guards are mean because they want the tank for themselves, that all the other children are hiding in order to win the game, and puts off every attempt of Giosuè’s ending the game and returning home by convincing him that they are in the lead for the tank.

Guido maintains this story right until the end when in the chaos caused by the American advance drawing near, he tells his son to stay in a pillbox until everybody has left, this being the final test before the he really got the tank for first place. Guido is killed in the night as he is discovered searching for Dora, whom he is trying to warn not to get on the buses for they will take her to the gas chambers. Giosuè survives, thinks he’s won the game when an American tank arrives to liberate the camp, and is reunited with his mother by the American tank commander.

Guido tried to get the girl of his dreams, also have a smart son. But, life never is perfect most of the times. Guido has to deal with the Nazi in the concentration camp to protect his son and keep his son alive, also reuniting his family. The best part of Life is Beautiful it’s the depiction of the love and sacrifice of a father for a son that makes Life is Beautiful worthwhile.