Life is Beautiful Blog

Book: Night
By: Elie Wiesel
Pages: 0-112 (End)

Movie: Life is Beautiful

By: Roberto Benigni, 1997

Prompts:

-Based on the Holocaust literature and poetry we have read, what connections can be made between Life is Beautiful and our reading?  

-What events, scenes, or situations are similar or different? 

-What is similar or different about the mood or tone of the pieces? 

-Analyze how differences in points of view of characters create suspense or humor.

-How is life shown as beautiful throughout the film. Pull out at least two examples from different parts of the film and explain your rationale.

          There are many connections between the movie, Life is Beautiful, and the book, Night. One major connection I made was the father and son bond. In the movie the son was very young (looked like he was 6) and the father was trying to keep all the death and hard labor, starvation, etc. away from him. So the father, Guido, said it was a game and that you win points by hiding. This left me thinking of how much trust a little kid has and how he trusted his father. This connects with how Eliezer from Night cares for his dad. In the book Eliezer tells the guard, "'Please sir ... I’d like to be near my father.' 'All right. Your father will work here, next to you.' We were lucky." This connects to how Guido cared for his so by telling a lie so he wouldn't be scared, and also to later save his life.

The book was different than the movie with the fact that in the book Eliezer's family was pure Jewish as in the movie half of the family was Jewish and the rest was not. So they were two different situations. For example, the wife who was Jewish in the movie chose to go with the Jewish to the concentration camp, she did not have to go. On the other hand Eliezer's family was forced to go to the concentration camp and be separated by gender. This got my attention mainly due to the fact that the wife of Guido (in the movie) chose to go, and she did not have to because she was not Jewish. The only I think for sure is that Dora (Guido's wife) didn't know what she was getting herself into, but it was nice of her.

The movie and the book both had very similar moods. The only difference was the humorous beginning in the movie and small humorous hints throuout the rest of the movie. An example of humor from the movie is instead of hiding behind vase Guido decides to pick it up and cover his face with it to try not to be seen. But as soon as Guido and his family got onto the cattle cars the mood dropped from humorous and happy to dark and sad. The dark and sad part of the movie relates to the mood of the book. I know that the mood of Night is dark and sad because in just the second chapter if the book Eliezer narrates, "She received several blows to the head, blows that could have been lethal." This is negative because it shows someone being brutally hit and it is never correct to hit anyone for any reason. But as I said before there were some hits thoughout the movie of humor. An example is when Guido is serving  at the German dinner and his son is faking as a German boy so he can not talk othewise he will be caught and killed. Then, Guido's son accedently says "thank you." After that a German adult goes to fetch the one who takes care of the German kids and when he is doing that Guido teaches all of the kids to say "thank you" so by the time the German caretaker comes all of the Germankids are saying "thank you." I found this funny because the reaction on the caretakers face was priceless.

The point of view in both the movie and the book were different. In the book the point of view was from Eliezer. This made the book more sad and suspenseful because only he can tell you what happened next because it is his memoir. On the other hand the movie was from Guido's point of view. He was able to show how he was really funny when he fell in love. Then during the Holocaust became depressed but didn't want his boy to see through him and see that so he tried to still be playful. 

In the film Life is Beautiful life is shown as beautiful. I say this because in the film Dora (Guido's wife) gets on the train which is filled with Jewish in cattle cars. She does this to be with her family, the ones she loves. I find that this shows how life is beautiful because without someone you would feel lonely or even sad. Another reason I say life is beautiful is because in the film Guido reassured his wife that he was alive by playing music loudly out the window that they heard in an opera together. This made me think that life was shown as beautiful in the film because Guido cared so much for his wife that whenever he could he wanted to reassure his wife about his well being, so she would not worry.

"This is a picture of the DVD cover for Life is Beautiful"