Life is Beautiful

SUMMARY OF “LIFE IS BEAUTIFUL” 

This movie is about the love one man had for his wife and child and the lengths he would go to in order to protect them.  In the beginning the man meets his wife, in a way that is very funny (he pretends to be a prince) and we see that his character is one who is always very positive and light and humorous.  The movie then skips ahead to the future, during WW2, when the man and his son are taken from his workplace because the man is Jewish.  The wife, who is not Jewish, goes on the train to the concentration camp because she loves her family and doesn’t want to be separated from them, which is another example of how love is really the main theme of the story.  At the concentration camp, the man and his son are separated from the wife/mother and the man creates this big game to protect his son.  In the end, the man gets killed, just as the war is ending, but his “game” let his son and wife get reunited. 

 

• Who is the target audience?

            From teenagers to adults

• How are individuals or groups of people being represented or misrepresented in the film?

       It was an accurate representation of the Nazis and to a lesser degree the concentration camp, it was also of an accurate     

       representation of the degree to which parents will go to protect their children and the kind of love you have for your family. The father might have been misrepresented in terms of being a Jew because he was so positive which was a little unrealistic.

• What do you thing the meaning of the narrative is? Why was it created?

      Even in the darkest of circumstances, we can find beauty, The father showed such a  touching amount of love for his wife and son, he went so far to make sure that they could survive, that even though he dies, he loved his wife and son so much more than  he loved himself, that the story ending feels sweet and touching.   The director challenges the audience to think about a terrible and unimaginable situation in a way that they usually don’t – in away that is beautiful about human nature.

• Where stereotypes being perpetuated of broken down?

      Most stereotypes were perpetuated. The movie made me feel badly for the Jews and made me think of the Nazis in a negative way. But in the other hand I didn’t see so many people dying which is usually what you see in movies about the Holocaust.

• Did you like the film? Support your answer.

       I liked the film; it showed me how something horrible such as the Holocaust can still show how good some people can be. What I mean by this is that the father lies to his child to make him believe that surviving in the concentration camp is like winning a game. This demonstration of love is so powerful that it lets this sensitive subject be   seen in a different way. Roberto Begnini shows a historical moment in a unique way that is less historical and more about the emotions people felt in that situation.

20th century history

In the News: Police Break Up Protest in Spain

Last Friday, on February 29th, in Tirso de Molina in Madrid, the police broke up a fight that happened when a group of anti-fascists went to where right-wing activists were meeting.  This happened only a week before Spanish general elections.  This news, which was reported in Al-Jazeera, was important because it also brought up the topic of immigration, which Al-Jazeera suggests was the reason wh ythere was such a big protest. The article reports that immigration has increased in the past ten years and that immigrants make up 9% of the Spanish population.  The article also suggests that the Partido Popular calls immigration “a problem”.  At this violent, racist fight, nobody was injured hundreds of people were throwing rocks and bricks at important offices and banks in Madrid. 

After reading this article, I had some questions.  I wondered what the other side of the story was, because Al-Jazeera very clearly was only reporting one side.  I also wondered if the meeting itself had been allowed by the Madrid local authorities.  I also thought that this fight might affect the March 9 elections.  Finally, I wondered why there has been so much immigration in the past years to Spain from other countries.  To begin answering these questions I  first went to El Pais website where I found an article about the same fight.  This article said almost the same things except that it gave more information about the specifics of the effects of the fight in Madrid.  It also says that the right-wing meeting had not been allowed by the authorities, even though this is what Al-Jazeera had said.  El Pais also said that the intention of demonstration was from the extreme right and the protesters were organized by “Asamblea Antifascista”. 

From here, I moved to my questions about immigration.  I discovered in El Pais that some of the intentions of PP (Partido Popular) is  to not have lots of immigrants, and only immigrants from Europe.  PP thinks that immigrants need to know Spanish, have “professional capacity”, they have to know the legal Spanish system, and they have to know the Spanish culture.  This article didn’t really answer my questions about why there was so much immigration so I did a Google search to find out more about the topic.  I learned from some different news blogs that most of the immigrants in the past years have been coming from Africa, through the Canary Islands, and that also there are many from North Africa who came illegally.  The Spanish government is trying to find a way to help the countries that the immigrants are coming from so they don’t have to leave their countries in the first place. 

From these articles, I personally think there is no reason for the violence in Madrid to have happened because I think that the result of the fight was that things got destroyed and their thoughts didn’t change or change the opinions of others.  Also, since Franco, lots of years have passed, and so I don’t understand why people are destroying the country for facism. 

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