A Barthesian Analysis of the Movie Murder on the Orient Express

Abstract

The paper aims to analyse the movie Murder on the Orient Express using Roland Barthes’ codes of narrative analysis. The work under-discussion is an adaptation of the novel of same name written by Agatha Christie in 1934. There is little work done on the visual literature from the perspective of this theory. The authors use the five codes in an attempt to uncover and decrypt the meaning of the movie’s plot. The theory for this research is Structuralism and the theoretical framework is that of Roland Barthes’. Additionally, the data for analysis i.e. dialogues are taken from the movie and rest of the references are taken from different sources across the internet. The first two codes of the theory can be used to decipher the major events and enigmas of the plot. The rest of the three are used to point out the antithetic, cultural and beyond surface meanings. The writer finds out that the plot is scriptible which means it is not easily understandable to the viewer at first glance. One has to contemplate to get a better understanding of the story.