For my rhetorical analysis essay, I will be comparing the movie Life is Beautiful to the movie from which my civic artifact was picked, Schindler’s List. Life is Beautiful is an Italian film created by Roberto Benigni who also stars as the main character, Guido. The movie is essentially a humorous take on a very serious subject, the Holocaust. Although the movie ends in tragedy with Guido being shot while he is in a concentration camp, one of the main message of the movie is finding the positive, more humorous side of things. Humor can be a huge coping method for people and as shown in the movie, humor and positivity was what got Guido’s son through the Holocaust. Before the Holocaust, Guido did not take life very seriously which sometimes got him into trouble, but other times, was a huge blessing especially when it came to meeting his wife. When him and his son are put together in a concentration camp, he again, takes the situation nonchalantly and pretends for the sake of his son that they’re living in the concentration camp because they’re part of a fun game.
I was particularly drawn to this artifact mainly because I had seen the movie so many times that when I needed to compare Oskar Schindler to someone, Begnini’s character popped right into my head. Because the movie has such a great theme of resilience despite tragedy, and it’s completely in Italian, I watched the movie in my Italian class twice a year for four years in high school, so I know the movie fairly well. I definitely think that an in-depth analysis of this film is possible because the movie has an extremely unique take on the Holocaust. Some of the things that I’ve gone in-depth about in my rough drafts is the pathos employed in Life is Beautiful and the similar ways in which the two films show the extent to which daily life was affected. Another thing that I found really interesting as I went deeper into both movies was the fact that kairotic appeals were definitely present in Schindler’s List, but when Life is Beautiful is looked at closely, there really is no kairos. This is definitely something I hope to develop more in my essay.