Bella - Movie Review

How many people stop every moment and are thankful to have been brought onto this earth? Many of us take life for granted as we go through our daily routines. We forget the value of life and the gift that we have been given to live. Every day of our lives should be looked at as a blessing. Each and every human being was put on this earth for a reason, and thus, each and every human is an integral part of society. Pope John Paul II stresses the sanctity of life in his encyclical letter, titled "The Gospel of Life."

The Gospel of Life is the joyful news that a child has been born. It is at the heart of Jesus' message, and it is preached on a regular basis by the Catholic Church. A key message of "The Gospel of Life" is that life is sacred from the very moment of conception until natural death. This way of thinking is known as the "culture of life." "The Gospel of Life" stresses that "today there exists a great multitude of weak and defenseless human beings, unborn children in particular, whose fundamental right to life is being trampled on" (17). The movie "Bella," directed by Alejandro Gomez Monteverde, reflects this "culture of life" in battling the common practice of abortion in the United States today.

The movie "Bella" takes place in New York City. It is a subtly prolife film about a young woman named Nina who is struggling with whether or not she wants to have an abortion. One of her coworkers, Jose, sees that she is struggling with some issues and tries to help her through her problems. When he finds out that she is pregnant and is considering an abortion, he immediately tries to stop her. He frequently thinks back to a time when he was going to be an international soccer star. One day during his time of fame and fortune, he ran over a little girl while driving and killed her. This changed his life forever. He felt that he needed to help Nina as a sort of repayment for the mistakes that he has made in his past. At the end of the film, Nina decides not to have an abortion, and instead, Jose adopts the child from Nina. In many ways, the movie "Bella" represents the culture of life.

The first reason why the movie "Bella" reflects the culture of life is that Nina obviously decides to keep the child rather than having an abortion. By the end of the film, Nina respected the fact that life is sacred from the moment that a child is conceived. However, throughout the film she supported the idea of having an abortion. She said, "I never said I was having a kid. I said I was pregnant." This refers to the fact that her mind was set on having an abortion, and nobody could change her mind. She then stated the fact that "ten out of ten people die." Basically, in this line, she is saying that the baby is going to die anyways; therefore, she might as well murder it now.

Throughout the entire movie, Jose is