Life is Beautiful is a comedy about the World War II holocaust, a movie that helps me further define adulthood and an experience that I think is necessary for every person. I think everyone should have to watch Schindler’s List in his or her lifetime, and I think everyone should have to watch Life is Beautiful as well, but for two different reasons.
First I think that we all need to more fully understand the human capacity, to love and to hate, to save others and to be indifferent. Guido, the main character, naturally surrounds himself with wonderful, loving and caring people. His family, his relationships and his personality are all very healthy, happy and supportive. However, he crosses some people who would rather not think of such things. In Life is Beautiful, Guido meets a doctor who is obsessed with riddles. They first meet in the hotel in which Guido works as a waiter and they later meet when Guido is in a concentration camp with his family and the doctor is working as a Reich physician. The doctor had always admired Guido’s ability to solve puzzles, but as the movie moves on the viewer begins to realize…that’s all the doctor ever admired about him. Guido comes to the physician for help, for safety and for a way out of a camp designed to kill him, his wife and his young child. The doctor comes to Guido with another riddle that he just can’t solve on his own. That’s all. No help.
As we all develop or fail to develop into adults, we have a lot of choices to make. We have to decide on professions, sacrifices, relationships, finances, education, spirituality, clubs, family and friends. We all have to decide what’s important to us, what we are willing to volunteer our lives to, and what we are ultimately willing to die for. For some of us, it’s intellectual challenge like the doctor. He chose to ignore the people around him that were dying everyday. We can do that do, and a lot of us probably will. People can and will die around us everyday, whether we acknowledge it or not. Then there is Guido and people like him, willing to sacrifice themselves for others, willing to save another person at his own expense. People all around us can and will be saved each and every day. Who will do it? How will they? How will I?