Oryah Bensalmon
Mr. Teversham
CHC2Db
15 May 2018
World War II Movie Reflection- Life is Beautiful
Part 1: Summary
Life is Beautiful is a movie that begins in pre-war Italy. It depicts the love story of a man
and his wife, and how his family came to be. Later on in the movie, the family transported to the
concentration camps. Guido, the main character, protects his son from the horrors of the camps
by pretending that all the work and terrible occurrences in the camps are part of a game, and they
need to be the winners. In the end, Guido dies while trying to find his wife, and his child and
wife make it out safely at the end of the war.
Part 2: Reflection
The movie Life is Beautiful is a heartwarming film that depicts the themes of family and
hardships during World War II, while also highlighting the historical aspects of the movie and
the time period. The movie begins with a comedy filled love story, set in pre-war Italy. It begins
with introducing the main character, Guido, and his journey to pine after a beautiful woman he
coincidentally keeps running into. Guido manages to make the lovely lady fall for him, and they
express their love under a table at the woman’s engagement party to another man. Guido takes
the woman out of the party on a horse which was previously vandalized with anti semitic
comments. This scene in particular caught my eye because of the symbolism behind it. In the
Holocaust, there were many families and couples who persevered throughout the struggles of the
war, through thick and through thin. They did not let antisemitism or discrimination cut between
them and their loved ones. This is displayed in the movie because Guido did not let a vandalized
horse get in the way of him expressing his love for his soon to be wife.
Later on in the movie, there are scenes showing Guido and his wife take their child,
Joshua, to school on a bike. They travel throughout Italy to get to school. In this scene, we can
see what pre-war Italy really looked like, and how families were back then. In our times, we may
seem like we cannot really understand that these people who went through the tragedies in the
Holocaust were real people with real lives. Before the war, they did not even start to think about
the fact that someday, they would be ripped up from their homes to their death. They began as
normal families, similar to the families we have today. T...
