Life is Beautiful... (and a lie?)

Overall the movie was great and tied in well with Man's Search for Meaning. Guido's cleverness and wit protected his innocent four-year-old son from the harsh realityof what really happens in the concentration camps. Initially, I thought Guido should not have lied to his son, because if Joshua discovered the hurtful truth, he wouldn't have known how to trust his father after that point. Needless to say, after a certain point I felt that the lie became irreversible and there was no going back. At the end of the movie, when Dora (Guido's wife, Joshua's mother) and Joshua are liberated by the Americans, I think that would have been a good time for Joshua to find out about the Holocaust, and what is being done to his people, and also to find out that his father might not have made it. I think telling him at that point would have eased much of the pain than years later, should he constantly wonder where his v father is. However, throughout the movie, I kept wondering how differently Guido's game would have played out if Joshua was a little bit older in the camps, maybe seven or eight, but still was unaware of what happens in the camps. I feel that Guido would have never started the game in the first place, fearing that Joshua's reasoning skills would be more developed than a four-year-old's, and that he would become suspicious.