Allegory? Fantasy? Bullshit!

Rating: 4/10 (1 May 2015)

Judging by Holocaust movies I've seen it's extremely difficult to recreate concentration-camp life. The best I've seen in that respect is PLAYING FOR TIME which showed, inter alia, the effects of malnutrition & brutality. SCHINDLER'S LIST gets "E" for Effort but doesn't come close to verisimilitude. LIFE IS BEAUTIFUL is pure bullshit! You didn't get to volunteer to go to a concentration camp like the wife did. She would have been arrested and maybe deported later but the Germans were meticulous about record-keeping and had to account for every deportee. The idea that a little kid could be kept secret in a barracks is beyond ludicrous. The guards would launch inspections at all hours, usually the wee hours, and would dump all the bedding in the process. Violations of camp rules were punished with torture and death. This movie is an insult to the intelligence of anyone who knows anything about the camps. It amounts to a feel-good vision of the Holocaust! The only people who love this movie must know less than nothing about life in the camps!