Giosuè
La Vita è Bella cannot help but inspire. Maybe because we are living at the end of the 20th century with a number of questions that haunt us both before and after we enter the cinema: in a world with millions of Giosuès, is it true that life, also beauty and cruelty, are in the end a matter of how they are interpreted for us?
Goenawan Mohamad
October 10, 2022
IN the small town of Arezzo, Giosuè knows nothing about hatred. He is just four years old. His father, the owner of a small bookshop, loves him dearly: his mother dotes on him. One day in 1939, the boy sees a sign at the town bakery: “Dogs and Jews forbidden.” He asks his father why this is so. His father replies with a lie, saying that anybody can make any kind of rule they like. For instance, his father says, there are shops
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