Life+is+beautiful

Life is Beautiful is an Italian film which was directed by Roberto Benigni, who also played the role of Guido. The film is about Guido, who is a comical and humorous character, and is in search of love. He meets Dora and is immediately drawn to her, and he uses countless ways to surprise her by meeting her in unexpected ways. However, although Dora has her eyes set on Guido, she is set to get married with another man. This was not to stop Guido for pursuing her, as a waiter at her banquet, he takes her with him. The film time jumps to a time where both are married and have a child, Giosué. Their happiness did not last long, on Giosué's birthday, Guido and Giosué both are captured by Nazi soldiers and sent to concentration camps, based on their race. Upon finding that out, Dora, who was not taken, pleads a soldier to let her go with them. The father and son were forced into a concentration camp, but in hopes to preserve Giosué's innocence, Guido tells him that they are in a game that Giosué needs to win. The first one to reach 1000 points, will get a real tank. Throughout the film, Guido is required to make sacrifices for his son to remain innocence and not be affected by the dangers of the real world. He also needs to do this as he wants his whole family to be reunited, safe and sound. After days pass, Guido makes an attempt to find his wife and through doing that, he is spotted and then killed by Nazi soldiers. The next day, the camp is liberated my American soldiers and Giosué has "won" a tank. He rides the tank with the American soldier and spots his mom, and they are reunited.

Life is beautiful has two contrasting tones, it has a joyful tone at the start of the film and an optimistic but sad tone in the end. What i mean by optimistic but sad is that Guido tries to preserve his son's innocence by being optimistic and happy when the environment is dead and depressing.

What the character wants:Guido wants to have a happy family and to live in a peaceful environment. What the character needs:He needs to sacrifice for his wife and his son in order for them to live on.

1. Placement: In these two scenes, the two characters literally bumped into each other unexpectedly. In the first scene, Dora falls onto Guido and in the second scene, Guido falls onto Dora. Moreover, both shots seems to be from the opposite camera angle. Shot 1 is filmed from the right while shot 2 is filmed from the left. I think that this was meant to explore the theme of love and show that both sides love one another. Lastly, this kind of familiar placement gives the audience a sense that both characters are bound to be together and that it is mutually accepted since it happened twice.

2.Costume/ prop: __**The hat**__ is used a few times to display the personality of Guido. Guido switches his hat with Oreste on different occsasions. The switching of the hat shows the comical side of Guido and also adds on to the drama of the film. The hat switching shows that Guido is a person who is always on the ball, looking for adventures and it also gives a very joyful and optimistic tone to the film. Furthermore, the hat switching becomes very significant where Guido wishes for a different hat and is switched right away with Oreste. This humor entertains the audience and again gives a comical tone. One more thing i found was that the hat switching might be a reflection of Guido's change of character, showing that he has the ability to switch hats according to his desire. This might be foreshadowing that he later needs to lie to his son that it is all a game and consequently switching back to reality, in attempts to save his wife in the midst of danger.

3. Prop: **__The__ __tank__** is used in the start where Giosué says that he lost his tank. I think that the tank is very significant in the film as in the end Giosué "wins" a real life American tank. This shift from toy to realism reflects on how war in general or the environment of the concentration camps made Giosué mature and grow up.Furthermore, it shows that he would start a new path of his life, realizing the negative side of the world, and that his dad has sacrifice himself for him. This relates to the constant dramatically ironic tone.



4.Juxtaposition: This scene of Guido riding a horse with a skull and offensive words is very funny and deep. The horse is a clear symbol of anti-semitism and is juxtaposed with the two characters who symbolize happiness and love. I think that this scene is a clear depiction of how Guido can make the best out of any situation and can be supported by how he made the best out of the concentration camp he and his son were in. This in a way foreshadows that the Guido and Dora would be on a bumpy ride. This relates to the funny and comical tone of Guido's schemes.

5.Framing: In this shot, everyone is all engrossed by the play while Guido looks up at his future wife. It is very comical as he is the only one who is looking on his right and he makes up excuses for his doing(being only able to hear from his left ear). This choice shows how Guido is absolutely love-strucked by Dora and will do anything to be with her. This contributes to a playful tone between Guido and Dora as part of his schemes to surprise her.

6.Irony:Irony is being used throughout the scenes in the concentration camps. This is a type of dramatic irony as the audience knows what is going on while a certain character (Giosué) is blinded by it. This reflects the theme of preserving once innocence as the audience knows that Guido is trying his very best to put his son in an illusion that the circumstances in which they are in is just part of the game. This not only gives a optimistic tone of staying positive but at the same time gives a depressing tone as reality does not match with what Guido says.This scene is particularly sad as the audience knows that something bad will happen to Uncle Eliseo.

7.Satire:Dramatic irony is used again to give a comical tone to this serious scene. Guido serves as a "translator" to the Italian-Jews, but in reality he is more of the "innocence preserver" in the scene, to prevent his son from knowing the horrors of concentration camps. He does this in such a comical way which makes the scene funny to the audience and without Guido, the prisoners, particularly Giosué would get to hear about the reality of concentration/death camps. This scene is also an example of juxtaposition, as Guido is saying contrasting with what is reality.

8. Choice of not inserting subtitles when the German soldier is speaking: This gives the audience to be in sync with what Giosué is hearing, it gives the audience a chance to be innocent and understand how Guido plays a huge role in preserving his innocence and not let him fear one bit about the concentration camp. 9. Acting: The role of Guido is a very complicated one, as not much is revealed about him. However, through his actions and his hand motions, the audience get the idea that he is a quick thinker and that he is in fact a very smart person. Not much is explicitly said about Guido, therefore his acting has a huge impact of the audience's understanding of him. Benigni does a great job in playing the role of Guido as through all his comical actions and the tone in his speech, the audience are able to formulate a impression of him 10.Irony: Even before getting killed and being in a threatened position, Guido still strives hard to protecting his son's innocence by protecting his "cover" as a player of the game. This scene is both comical but sad as while Guido is making a fool of himself in attempt to entertain his son, we know that him being caught sneaking around will have severe consequences. This kind of dramatic irony extracts sympathy for the entire family and emphasizes the father's love for his son, it also embraces the theme of preserving his son's innocence.