But Capra's greatest film, It's a Wonderful Life, is a curious example of a work that means precisely the opposite of what it seems to say. Although the film is usually read as the pinnacle of the Capraesque ideal of grassroots optimism, I would argue that its subtext calls this optimism into serious question. In effect, the film encapsulates a disgust and anger with modern American life that are barely hidden, and often glaringly foregrounded. It is a grin that, once seen, can never be forgotten.
Money is everything is what that grin says, what the scene says, and what the film says.
In this final moment, the truth of the film strikes at us with metonymic power through the stilted images of celebration and victory and joy. In that Other World he has seen his friends and neighbors, even his wife, as lost, despairing, brutal, and corrupted. It is important to keep in mind that this town has never been the Bedford Falls of George's life, that this unhappy town is not the one that George has virtually created at the expense of his own happiness. It is a town of the Other World. When George returns from this world, it is quite impossible for him to forget what he has seen there, and this is made absolutely clear.