For several years the vagaries of life has persistently engaged the attention of philosophers; they span from deep prying questions such as the state of good and evil, light and darkness. As disparaging and thought-provoking as these issues of life may have entangled humanity, it has failed to dampen man’s quest to ask the right questions with the resolve to find satisfying answers to the dynamism in the human experience. For instance one of the most contentious issues that have pitched humanity along highly divisive lines is the question of love. Some have argued that love is an indispensable human emotional need. Love in its most absolute form is of great vitality to the human spirit, yet failure to appropriately conceptualize it can affect how it will be dispensed.

Being what it is, the ace movie director Roberto Benigni, has chosen to speak to the world about love, because of its place in humanity. His message is expressed in the award winning movie entitled “Life is Beautiful.” Love as a theme has been significantly highlighted in the movie to reflecting the widening corridors of love in every facet of the human experience. The movie is rife with the tremendous depth of parental love manifested by the level of deep sacrifices that have been used to epitomize this chilling fact. The power of romantic love is consummately able to defy what is otherwise regarded as unthinkable.

Looking back into every aspect of human history, it is clear that in every civilization there have always been those who bare the brunt of unwarranted victimization orchestrated by a supposedly consolidated oppressive caste system. The pervasiveness is so acute that this human anomaly becomes reinforced as defining strand of the fabric of society. Take for instance the advent of the various evolutions of discriminatory actions stemming from covert or overt anti-Semitic inclusiveness in defining different groups of people. The case is such that in the event of a proliferation of victimization, the oppressor assumes the role of defining the marginal streams of the oppressed. History clearly tells us that ideally, no amount of oppression or suppression has ever cowed a struggling people to submission—a point re-emphasized by the message put forward by Roberto Benigni’s presentation of an oppressed Jewish people who defy every attempt by the violent Nazi regime to victimize them.

Suffice to subject the movie to an independent analysis with the aim of eventually reconciling it to fit the fundamental theme of love expressed by the writer. Viewed as a fable the movie depicts the sweet and bitter nerves of love exemplified in the nuptial matrimony between a working class man and upper class woman. Following in the sequence of these events is the manner in which a loving father is willing to make a sacrificial lamb of himself just to save the life of a son he loves so deeply. In other words, the father is dying to live again. From both ends, it is seen that the movie has woven together romance and tragedy into a subtle constituent of comedy without compromising the defining themes intended to be communicated to the audience. The writer makes a lucid illumination of the real contradictions in life, such as sweetness versus bitterness, light versus darkness.