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February 19, 1999/3 Adar 5759, Vol. 51, No. 21
Life - yes, Nathan, it is beautiful
MARTY LATZ
Special to Jewish News
Uncle Marty. It has a strange ring to it. And while I haven't literally heard it yet, I will soon. A few weeks ago, I became an uncle for the first time. My older brother and his wife had a baby boy, Nathan Yakov Latz.
According to my mom, he looks exactly like my older brother as an infant. Not being around at my brother's birth, of course, I wouldn't know. He does represent, however, the beginning of another generation of life. As a brand-new uncle, it's an extraordinary, life-affirming feeling.
I experienced another extraordinary feeling - on the other end of the spectrum - last Friday when I attended the funeral of longtime Arizona Republic/Phoenix Gazette political columnist John Kolbe, who was a friend of mine. He died at age 58. Cancer prematurely took him - as it has taken many in my extended family. As I listened to the incredible things said about him, I couldn't help but think about my own father and his accomplishments. Thankfully, Dad has never had cancer and is healthy, working hard, and fully enjoying life.
That evening, I saw the movie "Life Is Beautiful," an Italian movie about life and death during the Holocaust. Set in Italy in the 1940s, the movie tracks the life of an Italian Jew named Guido, played by Roberto Benigni. It follows him as he falls in love with a beautiful gentile woman, runs off and gets married, has a young son, and then gets carted off with his son to a concentration camp. His non-Jewish wife - played by Benigni's real-life wife Nicoletta Braschi - refuses to be left behind, and so joins them on their horrific journey.
Somewhat incongruously, I couldn't stop laughing for the entire first third of the movie. Nor could many others. For the script was wonderfully comedic, the acting superb, and the entire film infused with Guido's life-loving energy. And we even laughed later, if a bit self-consciously, during some of the concentration camp scenes. If this sounds unfeeling and callous, I admit that before seeing the film myself, I couldn't understand how anyone could react to a Holocaust film this way. Friends had described the movie as funny, and I couldn't see any humor in the subject matter.
But the context is that Guido is, essentially, a clown. And he deeply loves and wants to protect his 5-year-old son from the depravity of their circumstances. So he uses the only tools at his disposal - his inventiveness and comedic talents - to create an elaborate ruse to shield his son from the reality of their situation. The way he does it is funny - but the reason he does it is anything but. The ruse works for his son, who survives without ever really understanding the full horrors around him, and it worked for me, too, in a different sort of way.
Roger Ebert of the Chicago Sun-Times said it best, writing that this film "is not about Nazis and Fascists, but about the human spirit. It is about rescuing whatever is good and hopeful from the wreckage of dreams. About hope for the future. About the necessary human conviction, or delusion, that things will be better for our children than they are right now."
I agree. Our lives and the lives of all those around us will be more fulfilled if we do two things, despite the sometimes enormous challenges afflicting us: believe we can make this world better, and act to make this happen, for us and for those after us.
John Kolbe made this world a better place. Nathan, I firmly hope and believe, you will do the same. Welcome to life. L'chaim.
Marty Latz is a Valley attorney and negotiation consultant. Send comments to mlatz@negot.com.
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