“Life Is Beautiful” Blog

I noticed many differences in the way The Holocaust is portrayed in Life Is Beautiful and Night. The mood or tones in each piece are different, even though they are practically about the same thing; The Holocaust. The mood in Life is Beautiful is generally more light and happy than in Night. Night is more dark and not very optimistic. Elie Wiesel wants his readers to know how terrible The Holocaust truly was, while Life is Beautiful brings humor into the Holocaust and might make the illusion that the Holocaust wasn’t that bad. The differences in the two pieces are made by the point of views of two different people.

The movie in question is called “Life is Beautiful”. But, this brings up the question, How is life beautiful? Even though the movie is about The Holocaust and it would seem that there is nothing beautiful about the Holocaust, there are aspects about the movie that are beautiful. One thing I found beautiful about life, based on the movie, is being able to be with who you truly love and being willing to do whatever it takes for your love. In “Life is Beautiful”, as soon as Guido bumped into Dora, he knew he wanted to be with her, and I’m sure she felt the same. Guido tried continuously and finally married her, after many attempts and even breaking up Dora’s engagement. The beauty is, after tons of things stopping them from doing so, Guido and Dora got married and had a family, just like they wanted. Throughout the Holocaust, their love stayed strong and Wido even gave his life to save Dora, which is a beautiful thing.

There are many instances in “Life is Beautiful” where it gives evidence of why life is beautiful. One that I saw in the movie is the innocence and trust of children. Throughout the movie, Guido tells his son, Joshua, different lies to make their situation a sort of fantasy, and Joshua believes every word his father says. If Joshua were older, he wouldn’t have believed what his father told him and would have used his own common sense to see what was truly happening. But, young Joshua in the movie didn’t have common sense yet and believed what he was told, just like all other little kids do. Guido tells Joshua that they are playing a game and they need to win one thousand points to win a tank. Both Guido and Joshua were probably a little happier if they were in the mindset of it being a game. But, Joshua may not have played along if he were older and they would have both been in despair. That is why the innocence of little children is one of the beauties of life.

There were multiple instances in the movie, “Life is Beautiful” where I noticed similar scenarios to the book “Night”. One was when Guido and his son, Joshua were on the train going to the concentration camp. Practically the exact same scene happened with Elie Wiesel and his father during the Holocaust. There was a part in Night when Elie was squished between 80-100 people in one train car, just like Guido was. But, when I was watching the movie, I got noticed a different tone about it than I did when I was reading the book. While in the train in “Life is Beautiful”, Guido tried to make the best out of the situation by telling a story to his son to help him not be scared, which actually probably helped Guido not be scared as well. While the train ride for Guido is stories and laughs with his son, the ride for Elie Wiesel and his father was a very different experience. Elie remembers having to stand up squished among tons of people, fear overpowering all of them. There was no laughter, no talking, just a solemn silence. The mood in the movie, “Life is Beautiful is more light and less intense than the mood of this part in “Night”. From Elie Wiesel’s point of view, this train ride was dark and horrifying. This shows that the mood or tone of the same situation can be much different based on the point of view of the author.