Written by: Lesly Almonte Norman The Golden Door Emanuele Crialese’s film, The Golden Door (2006) orbits around a Sicilian’s family departure from Italy to the United States with the mentality that they are heading into a land where the vegetables are massive, the rivers are filled with milk, and money rains from the skies. This film visually portrays the claims of “The American Dream” which I found incredibly interesting and quite comical especially since my parents are immigrants themselves. The father telling his two sons, “We have to arrive in America looking like princes” stood out to me because Dominicans have this same mentality when they’re going back to the Dominican Republic to visit because they have to make people believe they are doing well in the United States. This just furthers that belief that the United States is this land in which you are walking down the street and pulling money off of trees—it is a fantasy that people in other countries have conjured in their...
My family backstory is how my mom was born in Colombia in the 60's. My father was born in Queens in the 70's and at 9 months old relocated to Colombia. My mother moved to Queens in the late 80's as she had a aunt living in Los Angeles. My father lived in Colombia until 15 when he crashed my grandfather's luxury car and his punishment was to live in the United States with his uncle in New Jersey. My grandmother and grandfather ended up coming to the U.S to live with my father in the early 90's where once again he became a bad apple and got kicked out of the house and then he went to California for a one week vacation where he met my mother and a one week vacation turned into 9 months and a marriage. My other grandparents came to the U.S in the late 90's to be around for the birth of my sister and later on myself.
Life is Beautiful is one of those films that will make you laugh and make you sad at the same time. It is a good and a sad way to approach the topic of the Holocaust and what made it such a classic masterpiece in film is in the first half, a sweet-filled romance story filled with laughs and warmth about an Italian-Jewish waiter who eventually wins the girl of his dreams. But it takes a turn in the second half, a heartfelt story about a father protecting his son's innocence in spite of everything horrible going on within the setting of a concentration camp. The Golden Door is another beautiful film to watch and while it was slow-moving, it was ultimately rewarding of a drama with scenes of fantastical realism, lively humor and stunning images. One of the characters that are remarkable is the muted younger son. The contrast here with his first role is complete. Then, he plays a supercharged kid that was as relentless as anything around him. Just his eyes tell the whole story with s...
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