Keeping Love in the Worst Situation

Rating: 8/10 (8 February 2018)

Is my life beautiful? Despite several hardships and stress, when I look back at what I have done so far and what I will do in the future, I have to say that my life is pretty beautiful. If I asked this question to people who suffered in concentration camps under Nazi Germany 80 years ago, what would their answer be? The answer that most people would imagine is probably "no," but this movie tells us that it is not so simple.
The movie starts off with a fairytale story of Guido, a Jewish bookkeeper in Italy, who falls in love with Dora and has a son named Giosué. The movie has a sudden change in atmosphere when Guido's family is dragged into a Jewish concentration camp. The movie manages to balance between the tragic history and comical elements in describing their lives in the concentration camp. This balance is kept especially well with the constant characteristic of Guido. When I first saw the comical character of Guido, I expected it to change once he goes into the concentration camp. Contrary to what I anticipated, he maintains his characteristic to the end, primarily for his son Giosué.
The matter of whether this movie has an accurate description of the historical fact arises when discussing this movie. Especially, how the director chose to represent the concentration camps can be problematic. For one, it was impossible for Guido to marry a non-Jew in the first place because Italy adopted German's racial law in 1938. It was also almost impossible for children to survive in camps, especially extermination camps like the one that Guido is in. The director also did not choose to explicitly portray brutal and violent scenes of the camp, as even the working environment is somewhat comical.
However, I believe movies are more than just historical facts. This movie brings into light the idea that not every single moment in the camp was terrible. It also shows that there are some things, such as love, that cannot be destroyed even by the most brutal forces.