Life is beautiful

Twenty years ago, the film Life is Beautiful made its screen debut. In spite of being a non-Hollywood film, it became a commercial success. The film was controversial, especially for highbrow and politically correct critics, because it was shocking to introduce a comedy set in the period of the Holocaust. Why have comedy in a setting of terror and monstrosity, genocide and fascism?

Yet, for those who saw the film, what stood out was not the comedy but its severe poignancy — that the ultimate good happens after much suffering, pain, and death. Mae, my departed wife, and I did see Life is Beautiful, and we wept.

The film began brightly, depicting the life of a small Italian Jewish family — a dad, mom, and a small child — living a blissful petty bourgeois life in the medieval town of Arezzo in rustic and scenic Tuscany. But it was likewise a menacing time — the rise of dictator Benito Mussolini and the spread of fascism in Italy and elsewhere.

When World War II broke out, the fascists forcibly removed the Jews from their home, and sent them to a concentration camp. Among those caught and detained were the dad Guido and his son Giosuè. The wife Dora, in search of her husband and son, voluntarily submitted herself to be interned in the concentration camp.

Meanwhile, to protect the boy from the horror, Guido created a fantasy that their confinement was a game. The object of their game was to find Dora and then free themselves.

In the end, the son was reunited with his mom, and they attained freedom. But Guido had to sacrifice his life for this game to be won.

“Life is beautiful” is an apt description of how my wife Mae lived her life.

Yeb, Mae’s sister, describes Mae as a happy, bubbly baby. She was everyone’s favorite, especially her dad. In her childhood, Mae was full of gaiety and high spirits, sprinkled with pleasant naughtiness.

Once, an adult neighbor found small Mae straying away from her home in Area 1 on the UP campus. Asked by a neighbor where she was going, innocent Mae said she was headed towards 11^th Jamboree to visit her grandparents, an almost five-kilometer walk from her home.

And once at dawn, she went to the neighbor’s yard, watered the plants, and then from the window facing the garden, peeked at the master’s bedroom to find out what the English professor and wife were doing.

In her teens and young adulthood, Mae had diverse circles of friends — the scholars, the idlers, the hippies, the fratmen and their sisters, the barbarians (those who didn’t belong to fraternities or sororities), the leftists, and the professors. She was a “crush ng bayan,” and had many suitors.

She overstayed in the university, for it took her a long time to finish her thesis. Yet, she earned good grades, qualifying her to become a member of a Greek-lettered honor society,

Mae described herself as a “hedonist-activist.” Jokingly, she said that despite her mom’s karitela income as a UP professor, the children had the Cadillac taste. At the same time, she and family were exposed to progressive ideas and translated them into action. Mae was a constant companion of her mom, who became an anti-dictatorship activist and a member of Ka Pepe Diokno’s nationalist and democratic group named Kaakbay.

As a couple, Mae and I celebrated life. We dined, traveled, saw concerts and movies, attended family or social gatherings. Mae was with me in my activism — giving advice, editing my articles, joining me in forums and demonstrations.

But the beauty of life for Mae was not just about fun, merriment, adventure, and promoting a good cause. It was about the primacy of relationships. She valued relationships. She unconditionally loved me (despite our quarrels). She unconditionally loved her mom (despite their quarrels). She was most devastated by her dad’s early death (she was only seven years old when her dad died). She expressed her love to siblings, in-laws and friends in many ways — letters, calls, visits, listening, story-telling, hugs and kisses, etc.

The seriousness and sincerity of her relationships extended beyond me, her relatives, and her friends. In our neighborhood where everyone can live in anonymity, Mae befriended everyone — the street sweeper and her son, the bank teller and the bank manager, the key maker, the tambays or loafers, the pest control guy.

Mae helped a bank teller named Ferdie, still young but, like Mae, stricken with diabetes and undergoing dialysis treatments. Mae opened special accounts, which were unnecessary for us, to accommodate the requests of Ferdie who earned a commission for every new account.

I share the story of Marlon, the guy who does pest control. In one visit, he congratulated me about the freedom of information or FoI being signed as an Executive Order. I asked, how did he know? He said that he learned about the FoI and the work we do on the FoI from Mae. Mae had long conversations with him, from the trivial to the serious. Sometimes, Marlon said, he was late for his next appointment because of the extended chat with Mae.

I also recall the times Mae criticized me, that my idea of serving the people is abstract, in the sense that I focus on systemic change. For Mae, helping the people included giving money to the street children, which I objected to. We agreed that instead of giving cash, providing food to the poor children is better.

Thus, the beauty of life for Mae was essentially about love and relationships. For Mae, it was not just love for kin and tribe, but also for the common people, the strangers, the poor, and the downtrodden.

“Life is beautiful” is to uphold the value of life, to love humankind.

Yet, especially today, dark forces trample the value of life; thousands of people, especially the poor, are killed, murdered. We are going through our own version of the Holocaust. Mae would have wept; she would have stood up for the victims and the oppressed.

Mae embraced the beauty of life in spite of her pain and suffering. She, too, had her emotional trauma in life, and she had many health issues, including ovarian cancer and an irreversible diabetes that claimed her life.

For society, can the beauty of life coexist with pain, suffering, and crimes against humanity? The film Life is Beautiful gives us the answer. The bad and the evil cannot be permanent. Ultimately, justice and the good will overwhelm evil. As portrayed in Life is Beautiful, victory can be attained through patience, intelligence, and determination. And it is in the most painful struggle to banish the bad can we fully appreciate the beauty of life.

The author writes this piece to remember wife Mae on the occasion of her second death anniversary.

Filomeno S. Sta. Ana III coordinates the Action for Economic Reforms.

www.aer.ph