snowflakes

La vita è bella

In English, it means “Life is beautiful”. I find this movie so very meaningful. I am in the midst of watching all the Academy Award winning shows, and this happened to be the pick of the day.

I watched it online, where the whole movie was broken up into 12 parts. After watching the first few parts, I found the storyline shallow and the plot nonsensical, and wondered to myself, “why did this film win Academy Award 1998?”. It also baffles me because according to Wikipedia, “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.”

The first half of the movie is just the prelude to main gist of the story. Throw in some patience, finish the whole movie and you will get what I mean.

Life is beautiful?! Frankly how many of us truly agree to this statement? Worst still, there are many who have taken their own lives, because they found that there’s nothing in life worth living for. Just like in the movie, life isn’t smooth sailing, life isn’t always fair, life is plagued with injustice.
Lesson learnt from watching this movie: Life CAN BE beautiful if we have the right outlook and the desire to make it so, despite the hardships and troubles.

In the movie, Guido and his son was sent to a Jewish concentration camp. In order to shield and protect his son from the damaging effect of being in a concentration camp, Guido used his creativity and convinced his son that it was all a game. He urges his son to persist and press on until they win first prize in the “game”. I do not want to spoil the movie by giving away too much information. Just watch the movie if you haven’t, you’ll love it. Well at least, most people did! This was even Pope John Paul II’s favorite show.

After watching the movie, it makes me think….. often times when we are in a difficult situation in life, there may be nothing we can do to help the situation. Instead of murmuring, complaining and blaming others, we can channel our energy and resources to help those around us live a beautiful life!!

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It’s Valentine’s Day today. I just came back from ice-skating with some of cell group friends. Such a memorable day!! This is my first time skating. Struggled at first but in the end managed to do it right after many falls.

In the midst of the crowd, all I really wanted was you to be my side, holding my hand, as we glide together gently across the ice.

Happy Valentine’s Day, my dearest!