In The Movie "Life Is Beautiful" - Nominated In ...

In the movie “Life Is Beautiful” - nominated in 1998 as Best Picture for the Oscars - the main character Guido is placed in a concentration camp by the Nazis. Guido and his son, who is with him, pretend for his son that this horrible place is a game, with rules, so that his son doesn’t get too frightened. And it is truly amazing how he turns this very horrible place into a place in which his son is playing hide and seek from the Nazis, how to see something funny in the way the soldiers interact with each other.

Guido is such a positive and hopeful man that he brings laughter to his son and to other inmates in the concentration camp.

One Jewish group said that this movie does not disrespect the Holocaust, because “It’s a fable about human values, and how a concentration camp can destroy those values” (www.time.com/time/magazine/1998/int/980223/the_arts.cinema.its_a_be17.html). But Guido brings some humanity into such a place. He can bring light into such a darkness.

Jesus experienced his own concentration camp of troubles, but he found light in his own darkness as he looked towards God.