Film Review of Life Is Beautiful

Bianca Nicole A. Pineda

7 – Archimedes

Film Review of Life is Beautiful

Physical Level

Life is Beautiful is a romantic war movie. It is about a man named Guido who works in his Uncle Leo’s hotel and meets a lady named Dora. After meeting each other many times, Dora and Guido fall in love with each other after Dora runs from the man who she was being forced to marry.

Guido and Dora have a child named Giosue. One day, their fairy tale life comes to an end when Giosue and Guido are taken away by the Nazis to be taken to a concentration camp. Dora gets to the train just in time to get on and go with them. Dora showed a lot of courage joining Guido and Giosue not knowing where they were going.

Guido doesn’t want his 6-year old son Giosue to be scared by the war so he tells him that it is just a game. He says that when the game is over (the war) whoever gets the most points will win a tank. Giosue goes on believing this. Once at the camp, Guido and Giosue are taken to the barracks while Dora is taken to the women’s camp.

At the end of the war, Guido went looking for Dora but failed to find his wife. Instead, he gets caught by a Nazi soldier and was taken away and shot. But the game has not ended for Giosue, who came out from hiding when everyone had left the camp. An Allied tank came rolling toward him and he thought that he and his dad had won. The driver of the tank lifted him up and took him for a ride on the tank before he saw his mother and they were reunited once again.

Mental Level

        Guido is portrayed as a truly unique person in Life is Beautiful. He is a master storyteller who manipulates his surroundings in order to make his tales come true. This is his way of dealing with the reality of life around him and at the same time make that life beautiful.

Moral Level

        Guido may be seen as a manipulator of his surroundings but he is also seen as a person how is interested in creating another world for someone else. For example, he tells his son Giosue that everything in the concentration camp is a game. Guido is basically creating a fantasy to lift Giosue’s spirits up.