A Good Film But Not Without Issue

Rating: 8/10 (4 February 2018)

Overall, I enjoyed Life Is Beautiful and felt it portrayed concentration camp life with some truth, but I acknowledge that the film was not without its issues.
One important issue that the film got right was how sudden camp life became reality to Guido and his family. Although throughout the first half of the film we can witness the rise of Nazi ideals in Italy, this does not impede on life for Guido. Guido and Dora still laugh, fall in love, and have a child despite the rising levels of antisemitism and the intensifying of the war. The quickness with which the family is thrust into the concentration camp reflects how sudden this could happen to real people during the Holocaust. Dora returns home with her mother to find her house in a disastrous states and her family gone, and we, as viewers, are quickly thrown into camp life like many were in the 1930s and 1940s.
The innocence of Guido's son reflects life in camps as well. As a young child, Giosuè cannot comprehend the situation, and in an effort to preserve his son's innocence and perhaps his own sanity, Guido turns the camp into a game. From a historical perspective, children within a camp could sometimes give the surrounding adults some sense of goodness to hold onto to get them through the dark times. Guido's persistence on keeping his son innocent to the horrors probably helped him get through the day-to-day horrors of the camp.
There were some historical issues with this film. For example, Guido and Dora would not have been able to have been married in Italy in the 1940s as he was Jewish and she was not. Also, realistically speaking, Giosuè probably would not have survived the camp experience.
One larger issue that I had with the film was where the film ended. I took no issue with the ending itself, but I think that the film should have showed how Dora and Giosuè were thrust out of camp life and back into normal life. The camp experience for survivors of the Holocaust did not end with the freeing of the camp, and most struggling to reinsert themselves into the society that they left.