5 from Barthes for the Life is Wonderful

★Enigma Code :

 When I first saw this movie, this movie made me so curious. "What kind of movie is this?" "How am I supposed to react? Can I laugh? or Is it OK to cry?" I remember myself cried with the scene he was caught by a Nazi soldier at last, but ended with laughing. His face was so funny that I couldn't stop laughing eventhough it was so sad story!!! So, I googled it and found out that this movie's genre is called black comedy. And I also couldn't understand when Dora went WITH them even though she wasn't a Jews, but Guido's love of his son gave me a clue. That was because they extremely loved each other that without them, their lives weren't even so worhty!

★Action Code

 When Guido and his son Joshua were caught by the German, Guido tells Joshua that this is a game especially made for them, and whoever gets the 1,000 points of the score, he/she will get a real tank.

This action makes us understand that Guido is trying to save his son doing his best. With his effort, he almost survived. However, when he heard that the U.S. army is coming to save them, he went out to find his wife, but eventually caught by a German soldier. But when even he was about to kill, he pretended like this is not so serious situation to let his son not to be nervous. This kind of action code makes me think a lot. Well, he's very humorous person. With that character, he did his best to protect his son, and that revealed his love of his child and his wife.

★Character Code

 In this movie, Guido is very humorous, positive, and he loves his person with all his heart and life. When he first bumps into his girl, Dora, I couldn't find any surprise on his face. He just kissed on her knees saying "I'm sorry! I think you have pain here, here, and here!." I thought he was a playboy at first, but when he bumped into Dora for the third time, I saw his nervousness in his action - hiding behind his friend and asking him what she's doing with HIM(her fiance). I don't think he's never serious because I somewhat can read his mind. He seems like he doesn't really care about things happening around him, but that's not true. He does his things and he does his duty. The first 20 minutes of this movie shows he came to the village to run a bookstore business and it tells us that he has thoughts!! Therefore, with his not-so-serious, humorous, positive, and giving up-his-life-for-his-son actions tells us that he is very dumb on the outside, but forethoughtful person on the inside.

★Symbolic Code

There were lots of symbolic code in this movie, but I'd like to talk about a "tank". The tank fianlized all the heppenings that made the family seperated. Because Guido told Joshua that all the situation happening here is a GAME, Joshua is eager for the prize - a real tank! When he was hiding inside a box, everyone including his father was killed. However, since he didn't know what was actually going on, he came out from the box and wandered to look for some help! And suddenly a tank of an American army approaches him and takes him to his mother. Tank maybe a symbol of a war, but in this movie, it meant a peace to the audience. And because Guido's white lie that the prize would be a real tank was literally real to Joshua, it made this movie very touching.

 ★Cultural Code
 This movie has somewhat serious cultural back ground - Jewish extermination policy. The Nazi carried out the extermination policy because they wanted to let Aryan have supermacistism.(The majority of high society in German at that time was Jewish. That's why German didn't like Jewish people!) If you look at the inside of Hitler's policy, you will find out that he tried to exterminate the Jews because they were the chief obstacles for the step to German to become the best nation.