The Hero's Journey in Life is Beautiful

This movie is a two-for-one. The first half of Life is Beautiful (1997 winner of three Academy Awards) is a comedy-romance beginning with a straight-from-silent-films convertible with failed brakes taking our protagonist, Guido, careening downhill into a village lined with townspeople awaiting the arrival of Italy's king and queen. Instead they get Guido, waving frantically at them to clear the road. They respond with Nazi salute. That's a clue where this film is heading, no brakes applied, either.

A love story soon ensues between Guido and the village's school teacher, Dora, who is engaged to the up-tight town magistrate. It's no contest. Dora is beguiled by Guido's magical nature, which is alone is worth the price of admission to see Life is Beautiful part one. The sparse, pointed poetry of visual tricks build believably with grace and timing. There is a series of traded hats, cracked upon the magistrate's head eggs and keys dropped from the heavens. This is a master class in visual gags that drive the plot forward with mechanical precision.

The second half of Life is Beautiful is set six years or so after Dora dumps the magistrate and rides off with Guido atop Robin Hood, the horse who's been painted with anti-Jewish slurs. The couple's son, Joshua, appears ready to start school when he and his father are taken by force to a concentration camp along with the other Jews in the village. 

Joshua becomes the story's hero. Joshua's journey from innocence into the unknown is through a prison where he and others await their murder at the hands of Nazi thugs. Is he aware of where he is? His father's purpose in life becomes to convince Joshua he is safe instead of in danger, that he is playing in a fantastic game instead of awaiting execution. 

This killing ground is where Guido's magic is put to its greatest test. Guido uses the same idealism that he used to win over Dora's heart to shield their son from fear. To keep his son occupied, Guido concocts a contest in which Joshua has been signed up to play. He invents points that can be accrued by being quiet or by hiding. The aim is to win the prize of --what else would a kid want--a life-size army tank. 

Joshua may or may not be entirely distracted from the pain and squalor by the game. He plays the game and by doing so, he survives hiding in his new surroundings, the hunger for food and worst of all, separation from his mother Dora, who is with the women prisoners. Joshua shows signs of giving up on the game, but he is drawn back by Guido's trumped-up contest when his father tells him that he is just a few points short of winning, never comprehending the danger he is in. 

The boy's hero journey from the corridors of hell back to freedom comes from his faith and trust in his father's persuasive coaching and winking-eye humor. 

When the war ends, the Nazi's flee like roaches and the camp is liberated, Joshua is the first to greet the Allies. He is lifted onto the army tank his father had promised awaited him, the winner of the contest. Final Score: Innocence- One, Nazi Thugs -Zero. 

Life is Beautiful's first half convinces you that magic is anything but magical; Instead, you see that it is made by the hands of artful humans. The second half of the film shows you how vitally important it is to protect --by any means-- a child's heart from fear. When everything is taken from you-- by circumstances as banal and dead to all imagination as a concentration camp-- Guido's wit, and how he used it, show us that our minds contain weapons more powerful than any used against us. 

I caught a glimpse of my shadow

I wasn’t taught to be thankful to me or for me. 

I was to others, yes. 

I teach myself this now that I have time. 

To stand straight up, my entire length, in gratitude for my cells, my biology, my organs and their systems, millions of muscles, rivers of circulation, the miracle of my whir. 

My heart, brain, big toe, eyelash and my hard-working ass. 

I stand erect. Corrected. 

Let all my remaining moments be in thanks. 

Let my posture announce my unending gratitude.

Better late than never. 

All of us don’t get to say this. Think of the cheerful service of my skeleton, tendons, the full service intake and output systems, respiration, eating and digestion. 

All these years and rarely a hiccup! 

I’m grateful for those gentle reminders that suddenly appear to release my left shoulder aFnd to trust that the earth can bear to support me without my help or participation. 

Gracias a la Vida

 Gracias a la Vida.

Vida on the STARZ network breaks new ground in television storytelling with a chilling chingazo. For those not familiar with the term, it’s a big, honking whack.  

There are enough conflicts among families, cultures and economic classes  to fill the toughest Telenovela rulebook. Add to this mix generous servings of sex with a twist: Vida sex scenes are usually plot elements for characters to evolve. Crunchy on the outside, creamy on the inside. Yummy.

What Vida does best of all, however, is shine a light on the margins, seams and borders — those fragile and also those that are fixed—between the old and new. Vida does television surgery on eras, cultures, sexual orientations and generations then lays them open for us to see how we live and love, how we balance our values, what we keep or discard as Vida, life itself, veers just out of our reach.

Vida is funny in a heartbreaking way. It travels the rocky paths of traditional Latino patriarchy, but the journey includes modern versions of machismo lite, with new ways for power to proceed wearing new clothes.  There are woke, willing and even some representative weasly Latinos in Vida. Young and veteranos, too. We see every bump, misstep and chingazo that Vida may deal them with no sentimentality for absorbing the shocks. 

The series confronts a neighborhood’s gentrification in East Los Angeles. It follows a video blogger, Marisol, as she chronicles local businesses being remade for incoming yuppies, leaving locals without affordable services. 

The series unsentimentally examines Mexican American culture’s unequal treatment of daughters and sons. A caring and devoted daughter, Marisol, is overlooked in her father’s will, while her brother, whose irresponsible forgetfulness is the cause of her father’s accidental death, is left the family home. Marisol‘s journey from dutiful daughter to the girl who falls for the wrong wrong guy to finally forging her own difficult way to fight gentrification and landing a freelance job as a video blogger is a tale of triumph after betrayals and scorched friendships in her fledgling career as a neighborhood activist. She convinces her brother to add her name to the deed. Indeed. 

The force of the series is its ability to hold firm in its commitment to celebrate and affirm Latino culture, complex and  intact, the good, the bad, the whole enchilada. Vida walks with head held high to take her place at the great American table, unapologetic and without the need of an invitation. 

I am grateful for Vida because it recognizes all culture’s little treasures, the taco houses, the corner bar, that hold our history and lives as much as our homes, churches, schools and museums. 

The series itself is an example of fighting for justice and representation that echoes Vida’s fictional main storyline.

I’m most grateful to have lived long enough to see series show runner Tanya Saracho (born in Sinaloa, Mexico//Raised on the TX/TampsBorder//Nurtured by Chicago Theatre) and her team of creatives take the tools of entertainment and train them on social justice and empowerment both on screen and mas importante in the writing rooms of a television network. Gracias a la Vida!