It's a Wonderful Life
The Mutual Film Education of José and Camilo #42 (<PERSON>’s Choice)
It’s funny how with every new viewing the movie changes. It grows along with you, comforting your new anxieties as they are revealed to you with age, but always speaking to that younger self who couldn’t wait to leave their crummy little town to make a life for themselves.
Back when I first discovered It’s a Wonderful Life, I was a deeply depressed teenager who felt like he had to face all his battle alone, not realizing that, despite every bad thing going on in his life, his friends were all there for him. The movie helped me realize that, indeed, no man is a failure who has friends.
However, that same teenager had big dreams about leaving his own Bedford Falls behind to make it out in the real world where things actually happened. He made it out, sure, but he still was forced to come back a few years later, and that disappointment with himself pushed him once again into that all too familiar depression.
But just like <PERSON>, I can now see that I didn’t need to find happiness doing Big, Important things out there, facing the world all on my own. Because it’s not our big actions that mark out lives but the tiny ones we make on a day to day basis, how we treat our friends, our relatives, our neighbors. Our community. We have to be there for each other, that’s all there really is.
Merry Christmas, you old building & loan!
<PERSON>’s thoughts:
I’m guessing It’s A Wonderful Life became an instant classic about, literally, the milk of human kindness, the difficulties of being and remaining a good person, and a fabling of what it’s like to struggle through the worst of depression. It feels like there’s something profoundly relevant about rediscovering this movie in the age of this contemporary crisis of masculinity that we’re living through. 378
The idea that community will come together and not fail us even as the world around us crumbles through economic crisis or depression.
Never to have lived is the twist in this Dickensian fable where it is the hero who is flawed, tormented even, by the foregoing of his own ambition in favor of kindness and duty. <PERSON> does such a great job at walking us through this man’s frustrations, confusions and pitfalls, all while remaining true to his sense of duty and genuine generosity to those around him who need it. No wonder <PERSON> wants her children to look like him. No wonder we get teary eyed when he returns from temptation to that shabby yet majestic castle she’s built for them. I for one felt free to feel that this is what one should aspire to.
Every single character in this film seems to be posing for their own portrait on every scene. But nowhere is the masterful use of expression clearer than in the character of Mr. <PERSON>. The first 15 minutes of the film are mesmerizing, especially as their told by the closest I believe Hollywood has ever come to biblically accurate portrayal of angels. What a magnificent gem of cinema that I’d been missing out on. 529