Educational Perspective

Life is Beautiful
Richard B. Gunderman, MD, PhD, MPH

Key Words: Professional fulfillment; optimism; resilience; life is beautiful.

ªAUR, 2015

I
t is sometimes difficult to see the beauty in life. The daily
news is often overrun by horrors—natural catastrophes,
man-made disasters, and instances of human desperation
and depravity. Physicians confront increasing workloads,
decreasing joy in practice, and ever more uncertain prospects
for the future of medicine. Sometimes, it can get pretty ugly.
At such times, it is especially important that we reawaken our
capacity to appreciate the beauty around us.
The stage for one of the most endearing films of recent
decades, 1997’s Life is Beautiful, was set by one of the most
influential books of the 20th century, Man’s Search for Meaning.
In the latter, neurologist and psychoanalyst Victor Frankl tells
the stories of prisoners in the Auschwitz concentration camp.
Frankl argues that human beings can find meaning in even
the most wretched circumstances, and he proposes a novel
approach he dubs logotherapy to unlock this power.
Life is Beautiful—cowritten by, directed by, and starring
Roberto Benigni—tells the story of a man with an eye for
beauty and a way with words. Guido Orefice is a Jewish Italian
who comes to the city; finds a woman, woos, and marries her;
fathers a child; and then draws on his fertile imagination to
protect his family from the brutality of a German concentra-
tion camp. The film received Academy Awards for Best
Foreign Language film and Best Actor, becoming the highest
grossing Italian film ever.
Life is Beautiful depicts logotherapy in action. As it opens,
Guido is just arriving in town to take a job as a waiter with
his uncle, who teaches him that it is possible to serve without
becoming a slave. Up until this point, Guido has gone through
life in a happy-go-lucky way, but now he begins to see the
importance of committing to the service of others. It is in
such service—first as a waiter, later in his career as a book-
seller, and finally as a husband and father—that Guido comes
fully to life.
He has a series of chance meetings with a local school
teacher, Dora (played by Nicoletta Braschi, Benigni’s wife),
a privileged young woman who captivates him immediately.
In their first meeting, she jumps from a window and falls
into his arms, fleeing a wasp that stung her thigh. With no
Acad Radiol 2015; 22:408–409
From the Indiana University, 702 North Barnhill Drive, Rm 1053, Indianapolis,
IN 46202. Received November 1, 2014; accepted November 4, 2014. Address
correspondence to: R.B.G. e-mail: rbgunder@iupui.edu
ªAUR, 2015
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.acra.2014.11.002
pause to ask her consent, Guido immediately sets to work
sucking out the venom. Repeatedly, good things come to
him from above, and he uses them to remove life’s sting.
Guido is a careful observer of all that goes on around
him, and he uses his fertile imagination to weave the threads
of disconnected narratives into a new and vibrant story.
Each day, a woman named Maria throws her house key
down to her husband; Guido has been exchanging riddles
with a local physician, the latest of which has the solution
seven seconds; and Guido keeps switching hats with a local
businessman. One night, wooing Dora, he seizes on each of
these seeming irrelevancies to convince her that their love is
meant to be:
 He tells her that she is like a treasure chest, and that to open
it and get her to say yes to his love he needs to find the key.
She says that heaven only knows where the key might be.
So he says that he will give it a try by asking the Virgin
Mary to toss it down to him. He calls out, ‘‘Maria, the
key!’’ and, to Dora’s amazement, a key drops from the
sky into his hand.
 He has gotten Dora to agree to have a chocolate ice cream,
which she says is enough to make her happy. After they
have been strolling for a while, she says that she needs to
go home, but he reminds her of the ice cream. ‘‘Let’s get
it right now,’’ he pleads. ‘‘No,’’ she says, ‘‘not now.’’ He
asks the Virgin Mary to say how long it must be before
they can have the ice cream. Just then the doctor comes
by with the riddle’s answer, ‘‘Seven seconds.’’ Dora is
amazed.
 It has been raining, and Guido is all wet. He tells Dora that
his suit is no big deal. ‘‘It’s that wet hat that bothers me,’’ she
says. ‘‘I need a dry hat, but where can I find one?’’ he asks.
‘‘Maria!’’ he calls heavenward, ‘‘send someone to give me a
dry hat.’’ The businessman walks by, lifts the wet hat from
Guido’s head, and replaces it with a dry one. Again, Dora
is struck with wonder.
Later, Guido rescues Dora from her unhappy engagement
party, where the talk of the town is National Socialism. Her
fiance and some of the guests are busy estimating how much
money could be saved if they eliminated lunatics, cripples,
and epileptics. The woman telling the story is unable to
perform the calculation, but Dora’s fiance quickly does the
math in his head and proudly announces the figure, to the
admiration of everyone but Dora, who is horrified. Guido
spirits her away on a horse.

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Soon, they are married and have a son, Joshua. In the
interim, Guido has opened his bookstore. But all is not
well, as the family is experiencing increasing anti-Semitism,
and they begin making plans to leave. On the day of Joshua’s
birthday celebration, however, the father and son are rounded
up and placed in a train to a concentration camp. Dora goes to
the train station and, despite the fact that she is not Jewish,
insists on boarding as well.
Life in the work camp is miserable, but Guido sets about
convincing Joshua that they are on holiday and the whole
experience is a game. He tells him that they are in competition
with others, and Joshua must never say that he wants his
mother, cry, or complain that he is hungry. So long as he
does not do these things, he will win points. He can even
win bonus points by staying quiet and hiding from the guards.
The first team to reach 1000 points wins a tank.
Conditions are hostile to life and humanity. The guards are
cruel, there is little food, and other inmates, including
children, are disappearing every day. But Guido has a playful
explanation for everything. The guards are surly because
they want the tank for themselves. The disappearing children
are just trying to win extra points. When Joshua says that he
would like to stop the game and go home, Guido tells him
that they are in the lead and need only keep competing a bit
longer.
As the American liberators approach, Guido places Joshua
in a hiding place and goes off to find Dora. However, he is
caught by a guard and marched off to be executed. But as
he passes by his son, he winks, smiles, and changes his gait
to an exaggerated goose step. The new morning, as Joshua
emerges, the Americans have taken the camp. Some soldiers
lift the boy aboard a tank, and he is convinced that he has
won the game. Then, as the film closes, he spots his mother
in the crowd.
The beauty of life is revealed in each of these characters—
even their names. Guido means guide. Guido functions as a
Virgil in many ways, helping his future bride see more clearly
what kind of man she really wants to spend her life with, and
providing his son with an ongoing ‘‘tour’’ of the concentration
camp, one that portrays everything in terms of a highly idio-
syncratic but life-preserving and affirming narrative.
Orefice means goldsmith. Guido takes something precious,
such as his initial chance encounters with Dora, and molds
them into a beautiful relationship, symbolized by a golden
ring. He does the same with his son, helping the boy to see
the good in people and the wonder in life. In the concentra-
tion camp, he gains access to the public address system to send
a message of hope to Dora, and his game helps Joshua retain
his goodness during an otherwise utterly dehumanizing
experience.
LIFE IS BEAUTIFUL
Dora means gift, and Guido’s beloved is a gift in many re-
spects. First, she falls from the sky, like manna from heaven,
into Guido’s arms. He has done nothing to earn her, but he
immediately realizes how precious she is and sets about
attempting to merit her love. Dora gives herself in choosing
to board the concentration camp train with her husband
and son. She would rather face death in their company than
maintain a secure existence without them.
Biblically, Joshua is the heir to Moses. Moses leads the Isra-
elites out of Egyptian bondage, through 40 years of wandering
in the wilderness, and to the Promised Land, which he sees
but does not live to enter. So too, Guido will die before the
camp is liberated by the Americans, but not before he has
seen to it that his son is safe. In the end, it is Joshua—also
the name of Jesus—who narrates the story of his father’s
sacrifice.
Like Odysseus, Guido is a man of many ways. In his transi-
tion from waiter to bookshop owner, he goes from someone
who learns to serve without being enslaved to someone who
nourishes the imaginations of others by helping them to find
alternate narratives of reality. He takes the threads of life and
weaves them into a new and more beautiful tapestry, not
only keeping each strand alive—the key, the hat, the seven
seconds—but using them to help bring others more fully to
life as well.
Guido offers glimpses of the true meaning of courage—not
ignoring or courting danger but finding inventive ways to sus-
tain himself and others without succumbing to fear or rage.
His courage is not for himself but for them, such as when
he keeps shouldering his load in the labor camp to ensure
that he can be there for his son. He faces up to reality by
deflecting it in new and playful directions, enabling others
to find hope.
In Man’s Search for Meaning, Victor Frankl attempts to
answer the question, ‘‘How was daily life in the concentration
camp reflected in the mind of the prisoner?’’ In Life is Beauti-
ful, Roberto Benigni offers us a vision of Frankl’s logotherapy
at its best. Guido Orefice, the guide and goldsmith, uses words
and stories to show that, even under the most desperate
circumstances, life can be not only meaningful but even
profoundly beautiful.
When the pressures of contemporary medical practice
become overwhelming and we no longer find joy in our
work, many of us would benefit from following Guido’s
lead. Times are tough, but there is still much to rejoice in.
We still earn good livings and enjoy better than average job
security. We can still make a difference in the lives of patients.
And, if we fully engage our imaginations, we still have the
opportunity to make work, life, and the world itself a more
beautiful place.
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