Good Film

Rating: 7/10 (4 February 2018)

This film is complex in not only does it seek to depict an experience within one of the Jewish concentration camps during the Holocaust, it is also the story of a special relationship between a father and son. To some viewers this relationship might appear at first glance to be over romanticized. How can someone possibly look back on such an experience with the acuity and detail that the film illustrates? Not only that, how can the experience, one that is surrounded by so much horror, come across as being wholesome? In order to refute such a view it is best to understand the film as being told through the eyes of a man who is trying to create a story as it actually was. Guido's humor throughout the film was his strongest attempt to carry through a life that almost could have never existed within the confines of the camp. Once again, to some viewers, to have such humor be a central piece of the film can be a disturbing aspect when it is under the circumstances such as the Holocaust. But such a representation serves a higher goal. By trying to view the very fact of the concentration camp itself as some sort of game makes it more believable to the sensible human that accepting the fact that such a tragedy actualy happened.
Of course, the film has some historical flaws, namely the fact that the chances of having a child escape is nearly impossible. There is no way a child could have flown under the radar for such a long time. But the film is not entirely supposed to give an accurate historical representation, it instead focuses on the endurance of the human spirit and how certain relationships allow us to survive moments in history that, without such support, would have forever crushed the human soul. Just as relationships can carry us through the world, we must be ever conscious of the relationships that seek to tear us apart. Guido and Doctor Lessing are a prime example of this. From the foreshadowing moment when Doctor Lessing asks Guido the answer to the riddle: "If you say my name I am not there anymore, what am I?" The answer was silence. Representative of the silence the doctor held within himself about the fate of his close friend Guido and other Jews. Guido's right to a place within the world was not only silenced but trivialized when the doctor helps pleads for Guido's help in solving a riddle as Guido lives at the brink of death. The doctor laments that he cannot sleep with such a burden on his mind. It is a riddle that keeps him awake at night, not the deaths of his countrymen. The film thus incorporates various levels of commentary on our relationships with the people we surround ourselves with.