Plato in Italian film

First, play this. It'll get you in the mood to talk Italian cinema.

         Plato’s Allegory of the Cave presents us with the tension between reality and representation. The reality we know is not always the truth, and what we hold to be true may not be reality. Within Plato’s cave, the prisoners know only what they are exposed to. Once one prisoner is exposed to the world, he realizes that what he had previously known to be true was actually an inaccurate representation. What if our world isn’t real? What if what we know is the truth is just a part of the whole? What if everything we know is a lie!?

A strong yet admittedly extreme example of this concept can be found in Roberto Benigni’s famous Italian film, La Vita è Bella (Life is Beautiful).  For those of you who don’t know the plot, it’s about a family enduring life in a concentration camp during the Holocaust. Throughout the movie we follow a father, Guido, and his son, Giosué, through their daily life and challenges at the camp. The unique quality of this movie comes with how they confront and conceptualize reality: Guido successfully convinces Giosué that the entire Holocaust is a game. He intensely protects his child from the brutal reality of Nazism and death that surrounds them and promises that it is just a game to be won. He tells his son that it was especially planned for his birthday and that all the “games” are going to be fun!

This scene is the epitome of how it worked: when a German soldier asks for an Italian translator, Guido takes this opportunity to convince his son that they are in a concentration camp to win a tank (his son’s biggest dream). The entire movie follows the “game” and the progress they “make.” Every day the father comes home to his son and explains how many points he won that day and that the game will only end when someone earns enough to take home the tank.

When reality temporarily permeates the game, Giosué says he heard rumors from other people that they put Jews in an oven and confronts his father with this. Temporarily, he is like the freed prisoner of Plato’s cave. He has heard the truth, but it challenges the reality that his father has created for him to believe.  Guido forces an uncontrollable laugher as a reply, and convinces Giosué that it is an absurd idea. Ovens are for food! Have you ever seen a person in an oven?! Haha! Later, we see the truth when Guido walk by a pile of skeletons. The division between Guido’s reality and Giosué’s reality is constantly juxtaposed to prove that this father is completely molding a reality for his son so that he isn’t exposed to the truth.

If we apply this to our own lives we can consider Plato’s motive behind writing the Allegory. When we were younger, our parents sheltered us from the truth for our own benefit; “he bullies you because he likes you,” for example. They protect us by convincing us that certain things are realistic, that our lives will follow the rules of such a reality, but what if we never grew out of it? What if the depiction of reality that has been forced upon us becomes all that we know and believe? Furthermore, I think it’s interesting to consider whether or not we should blame anyone or anything for our false perceptions of reality. Even if it is their fault, can we blame them for protecting us? Would Giosué shame his father for getting them through the Holocaust the way he did? I certainly don’t think so.