Night, By Elie Wiesel: Film Analysis

The heartbreaking tragedies that the victims of the Holocaust suffered through changed their lives very greatly, and one thing they saw changed by their survival is the destruction of faith both in God and in people. In the novel Night, Elie, a survivor of the Holocaust, began to doubt his faith, and he eventually even loses his Jewish faith. When Elie and his father arrives, after the former would realize his mother and sister were sent to their deaths, Elie is automatically astonished by the environment he has been put in, and he begins to doubt his faith. After the Jews around him began to pray to God to save them, but in contrast Elie begins to question his faith and “for the first time, I felt anger rising within me. Why should I sanctify his name” (Wiesel 33). Throughout the future of the novel, as Elie continues to

Essentially, the Holocaust was so horrific that it was able to crush a person’s belief in which that put them into their torture, and Elie was willing to give up his faith in God in order to survive. In contrast, in the film Life is Beautiful, the main character Guido Orefice, an Italian Jew, loses faith in humanity. Prior in the film, he struck up a good relationship with a German doctor prior to the Nazis began the Holocaust, and the two recognize each other while in Auschwitz. Guido and the viewer are led to believe that the doctor is going to help Guido and his family escape, but that would be seen as untrue as he finally talks to the doctor. Instead of making a plan to get him transferred somewhere safer or even help them flee, Doctor Lessing only wants Guido to help him with a riddle he was stuck on. To his disappointment, Guido realizes that the Doctor is not going to help him, and he loses faith in a man he considered his