Story that impacted me

Atualizado: Novembro 2020

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At the moment the story that I remember that impacted me the most is a movie by Roberto Benigni, who is famous for playing funny characters. He played a funny character in this movie I’m going to share with you, although the movie itself is of a sad nature.

The original title is called “La vita è bella” (Life is beautiful) where Benigni was also a writer. The story revolves around Guido, the character played by Benigni that is captured along with his wife and son by Nazi forces to go to a concentration camp. I would consider this the end of Act 1.

Throughout the movie, Guido pretends they are playing games with the bad guys (the Nazis) as a way to protect his son from the negative outcomes of what is going on around them.

There are many things worth mentioning in the movie, which I could label their full extent as Act 2.

Act 3 contains the impactful scene of the whole movie (for me), which is when Guido hides his son in a container of sorts, and reassures his son he’s playing a hide and seek game with the Nazis. He’s found by some of them, that force him go into an alley.

As Guido is going into the alley, knowing that his son is watching, he does a marching parade with his legs reaching up to his arms, which gets his son giggling (still hiding). The scene ends with Guido going into the alley and the audience seeing the shadow of Guido and Nazi soldiers. The Nazi soldier shoots and we hear a body dropping.

What impacted me the most in this scene is the courage of Guido in being playful and easing the discomfort of war to his son through a series of games he makes up, culminating in his assassination at the hands of a Nazi soldier. Knowing he was going to die, and still making one last attempt at playing the charade by marching in an amusing way to keep the façade shows the enormous strength of the character.

The text above is an assignment for week 1 of The Future of Storytelling, a course on Iversity. Thank you for reading.