A New Take on "It's A Wonderful Life!" NYT.

[Doctor Strange]

An interesting analysis of It's A Wonderful Life in today's NY Times:

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/19/movies/19wond.html?_r=1&ref=arts

 

[Hemingway Jones]

Scott and I thought this was interesting enough and worthy enough of its own thread. I hope Strange and others will chime in with their take on this. Enjoy!

 

[Mrs. Merl]

Well, the movie gets me choked up, but that article down-right depressed me.

 

[Creeping Past]

That's a unique view of the movie and one with which I have a lot of sympathy.

I first cottoned on to this movie when in my late teens. I had a rather morbid cast of mind — I was reading H P Lovecraft, Thomas Hardy and Charles Bukowski at the time — and it rang a bell with me, living and working in a mean-minded, suffocating small town while most of my school friends went away to university.

If you've ever done something because you felt you ought to, rather than because you really want to, or if you've ever felt that you're stuck somewhere you'd rather not be, you should watch "It's a Wonderful Life".

IAWL is not just a 'spirit of Christmas' movie. It reflects something of the complexity and richness — and the abjection and wonder — of apparently mundane lives. I think that's why people like it so much.

 

[LocktownDog]

Makes sense to me. Good article.

 

[Creeping Past]

On reflection, it occurs to me that Potterville is actually more claustrophobic than Bedford Falls. Outside Bedford Falls is a wonderful wide world ready for adventuring in, even if you can't make that happen at will. And remember that Violet never left Potterville for a better life elsewhere, but she made it out of Bedford Falls.

Potterville's got all people need; why would they ever want to leave? Brrr....

 

[59Lark]

know one to be one.

Actually I do know what it like to stay behind and try to keep something alive, and look after people while the rest go to university and college and get big jobs, and move to far away places and drive volvos. Thirty years, and yet I dont think that I am bitter. Resentment, some but I like being different and i never wanted to be like everyone else, the only fear that I have is that the building and loan is getting harder and harder to keep going and i am getting older. I WISH that I HAD the number of friends that george had, my friends seem to going their own way and or dieing off. Keeping a way of life, a tradition of workmanship and customer loyalty seems like bedford falls a dinsaur. NOW some have said pottersville seems livelier and more fun, the road to ................ is smooth and paved, road hard and left out wet, that horse wont live a long happy life. Want a answer to most issues including the problem with bedford falls greed. Greed is still killing us, look at the newspaper. Maybe i am niave like george, and hope for the best, you know i have a hat and overcoat like george in that scene where he is getting the newspapers. Gotta go , zu zu is still up . 59Lark.fftopic:

 

[Hondo]

Its an interesting subject but really its just a movie, if it were real, true.
George would have ended up in jail, and whos to bail him out Santa?
Aint happening, maybe in the movies but not in real life.
Only a few years ago had I seen this film from beginning to end.
I enjoy, and like the movie so much, I buy copies when I can
give as gifts, some don't realize I have a hidden msg

 

[scotrace]

In the end, George gets to return to his old life, and Bedford Falls is as it was. But what has changed for him? He still has unused luggage and a sackful of broken dreams and promises. He still gets to manage the old Building & Loan, if it doesn't fold from the scandal which will send him to the hoosegow because of other people's mistakes. His house is still falling down. And he's still broke - broker in fact.

Is Bedford Falls better than Potterville? It is only because it is familiar. It's where George Bailey grew up and where his people are, his roots are, where his whole life is. Potterville is bad, as he knows it, because what he saw of it can be contrasted with what he knew in the aternative universe of Bedford Falls. Bedford Falls has its opportunities, so does Potterville. They are two towns. One familiar to George, (and dull) and one very foreign and frightening (and jumpin').
But had George grown up in Potterville, there would be no building & loan to get strapped to, and he would probably be spending the odd stray hour showing Sam Wainright's kid exactly how much polish to use when he washes George's Jaguar. Even George's father might have survived without the stress of it, living off the fat stake he got from selling out to Potter, vacationing in Havana.

The thing about Bedford Falls is that it is an idyllic little town full of loving people and swell neighbors, and it sucks the life out of George Bailey. He rebels against it even as he feels the fight leaving him. It only starts to look good when he's had a good beating and a thorough scare. And so George is forced to give up his dreams once and for all, and return to his draughty old house, while his brother and friends go off and make successes in the burbs.
George was going to lasso the moon, but he had to watch as life left him behind.
Is the ultimate lesson here that he who dares to dream, who dares to want and reach, will have it beaten out of him until he conforms? Or is it that the trick is, as they say, not getting what you want, but in wanting what you have? If so, life doesn't come with instructions for making yourself want a sackful of broken dreams and empty promises.

 

[LizzieMaine]

Gee whiz, you mean adulthood *isn't* about coming to terms with lost and abandoned dreams and realizing that responsibility means that sometimes there are things you just can't have even if you really really want them?

Well, ain't that somethin'. I wish someone would've TOLD me that.

 

[scotrace]

Good Grief. I haven't been that soundly spanked since I was six! lol

 

[Hemingway Jones]

I often felt that it is only Jimmy Stewart who sees through the material. Look at the savage intensity of the performance. He appears to understand it!

Here is a character who has been leading a life of intense desperation, tortured by unfulfilled dreams, regretting the compromises that he made, and the choices. He has children who he appears to blame for some portion of his failed life, and a wife who is oblivious to his existential struggles and who seems to coat her own life in saccharine obsequious conformity.

George obviously believes that he is smarter than everyone around him, and, judging by the evidence we have, he may be right! Although he may be smarter, he lacks the steely determination and willfulness that sees men and women of substance through hard times.

George Bailey is a character of little character. He is a man who, when faced with problems, takes his anger out on those around him and sees suicide as his only option. Had he been successful, a further irony is that insurance policies do not pay out on suicides!

So, this man, this troubled man, goes from metaphorically treading water into literally doing so, and probably in the same water he had saved his brother from.

Now, would George have jumped were it not for Clarence? Did he see rescuing Clarence as a means to return to the glory he achieved when he saved his brother? Does he long to drown in the same water that ended his dreams long ago?

His brother went on to be a hero in WWII; would George have done so instead? Is he aware of this? Were the compromises in his life already made?

It seems that without George, life would have been different for Bedford Falls. Certainly, Mary’s life was better with George. Evidently, she needed him to aspire toward anything of consequence. All else, seems a judgment call, except that Potter owned everything, so the freedom of its residents was impacted. They may all be drinking and partying, but the implication is that it’s all Potter’s liquor, Potter’s bar, and Potter’s money they’re spending.

So, all in all, one man’s dreams are slaughtered upon an altar of sacrifice so that the town may be free, so that Mary may have a warm home, and his children have a father. It took the threat of death and of irrelevance, which is worse than death to a man like Bailey, to force George to finally accept the responsibilities of parenthood, and to assume the yoke of the roles of adulthood.

PS. Interesting themes: The use of water as a means of death and of metaphorical and literal drowning. The significance of an ear injury, of having your ability to listen compromised. The house falling down around him, as his life is falling apart. The concept of money and of banking as a means of drawing a town together and by separating them, depending upon the Bailey or Potter school of finance!

PSS Why is it that angels always seem to have nerdy names? Clarence, or “Dudley” in “The Bishop’s Wife?”