Movie for the Soul

It's Saturday.
You deserve a break.
Don't forget a cup of hot mocha ( forget the calories!) or really cold soda, or fruit juice. And the best of all times--buttered popcorn.
I am sure that you have heard this movie, it's good to be reminded when we have forgotten timeless movies with life changing stories.
This should have been reshown on the big screen because of its timeless story: LOVE IN THE TIME OF WAR
( Ano kaya ang Pilipinas kung lahat ng tatay ay may pusong katulad ni Guido?)


LA VITA E BELLA or BEAUTIFUL LIFE ( Wikipedia.com)

The movie made the Cannes Film Festival in 1998, winning the Grand Prize of the Jury. It then went on to win Academy Awards for Best Music, Original Dramatic Score and Best Foreign Language Film. Benigni won Best Actor in both the foreign film category and overall for his role. The film was additionally nominated for Academy Awards for Directing, Film Editing, Best Picture, and Best Original Screenplay.

Life Is Beautiful (Italian: La vita è bella) is a 1997 Italian language film which tells the story of a Jewish Italian, Guido Orefice (played by Roberto Benigni, who also directed and co-wrote the film), who must learn how to use his fertile imagination to help his son survive their internment in a Nazi concentration camp.

Title

The title derives from Leon Trotsky's last testament; while in exile in Mexico, expecting to die shortly from high blood pressure (or from agents loyal to his rival Joseph Stalin), Trotsky wrote,

"Natasha has just come up to the window from the courtyard and opened it wider so that the air may enter more freely into my room. I can see the bright green strip of grass beneath the wall, and the clear blue sky above the wall, and sunlight everywhere. Life is beautiful. Let the future generations cleanse it of all evil, oppression and violence, and enjoy it to the full."


Plot

The first half of the movie is a whimsical, romantic comedy and often slapstick. Guido (Roberto Benigni), a young Italian Jew, arrives in Arezzo where he sets up a bookstore. Guido is both funny and charismatic, especially when he romances Dora (Italian, but not Jewish; portrayed by Benigni's actual wife Nicoletta Braschi), whom he steals – at her engagement – from her rude and loud fiancé. Several years pass, in which Guido and Dora have a son, Joshua (written Giosué in the Italian version; portrayed by Giorgio Cantarini). In the film, Joshua is around five years old. However, both the beginning and ending of the film is narrated by an older Joshua.

In the second half, Guido, Guido's uncle Eliseo, and Joshua are taken to a concentration camp on Joshua's birthday. Dora demands to join her family and is permitted to do so. In an attempt to keep up Joshua's spirits, Guido convinces him that the camp is just a game – a game in which the first person to get 1000 points wins a tank. He tells Joshua that if you complain for hunger you lose points, while quiet boys who hide from the camp guards earn points. He convinces Joshua that the camp guards are mean because they want the tank for themselves and that all the other children are hiding in order to win the game. He puts off every attempt of Joshua ending the game and returning home by convincing him that they are in the lead for the tank. Despite being surrounded by rampant death and people and all their sicknesses, Joshua does not question this fiction both because of his father's convincing performance and his own innocence.

Guido maintains this story right until the end, when – in the chaos caused by the American advance drawing near – he tells his son to stay in a sweatbox until everybody has left, this being the final test before the tank is his. After trying to find Dora, Guido is caught, taken away, and is shot by a Nazi guard, but not before making his son laugh one last time by imitating the Nazi guard as if the two of them are marching around the camp together. Joshua manages to survive, and thinks he has won the game when an American tank arrives to liberate the camp, and he is reunited with his mother.

Directed by Roberto Benigni
Produced by Gianluigi Braschi
Elda Ferri
Written by Roberto Benigni
Vincenzo Cerami
Starring Roberto Benigni
Nicoletta Braschi
Giorgio Cantarini
Giustino Durano
Editing by Simona Paggi
Distributed by Miramax Films (USA)
Release date(s) 20 December 1997
23 October 1998
6 November 1998
26 December 1998
12 February 1999
5 March 1999
8 April 1999
Running time 116 minutes
Language Italian, German, English

(On Nappie JR: Salamat sa mga officemates ko Ms. Tara, Weena at sa aking IHG Family salamat sa suporta kay Nappie. Kaisa nyo ako na isang araw magiging normal na siya. Katulad ni Joshua ,this little boy is fighting a battle, hindi man nya alam yun dahil it was what he grew up with from the very start. Let's help him put an end to Hirschsprung Disease. Good, innocent souls should be spared!)