LA CIVETTA MAY 2022 | Page 14

La Vita è Bella is one of those films that can be enjoyed countless times, yet each time feels extraordinarily like the first. Starring Roberto Benigni, as both director and protagonist, this is a film which allows us to simultaneously feel the depths of hope, fear, anticipation, and pain. It demonstrates the power of imagination, the importance of sacrifice, and, of course, the beauty of life. La Vita è Bella tells the story of a Jewish Italian bookshop owner, Guido Orefice, who is faced with the horror of a Nazi concentration camp during World War II. A horror which is intensified by the fact that his uncle Eliseo, his beloved wife, Dora, and his son, Giosuè are all seized alongside him and forced onto the same train to a terrible fate. Guido uses the art of storytelling to shield his son from the true reality of their situation. He convinces him of a complicated game full of tasks and rewards (if he cries, says he is hungry or complains that he wants his mother he will lose points!) and he continues to coax him at the times when Giosuè is reluctant to continue and only wants to return home. This fiction prevails until the very end of the film when Giosuè does, in a certain sense, ‘win’ the tank he was promised at the start.