Festive Flicks: It’s A Wonderful Life
This is an article I wrote for the University of Exeter’s student newspaper, Exeposé, and appeared in its print edition.
It’s A Wonderful Life is widely regarded as the canonical Christmas classic for a reason. Frank Capra’s classic film – which he noted was probably his best – epitomizes the warm, familial feelings most of us are lucky enough to associate with the Christmas season, but it’s important not to forget the deep winter it traverses to end up where it does.
The classic confronts what happens when reality falls short of the hopes people have for their lives. Jim Stewart’s George Bailey, a man who suddenly finds himself indebted to a Scrooge-like tycoon, is not his brother, who travels the world, living the very dream that was once George’s own. When we meet him, George is contemplating the unimaginable: hurling himself from a bridge such that his family might pay off his debts with the resultant insurance payout.
Even as things wrap up, as that Christmas cheer we’ve been eagerly awaiting arrives, not everything has been fixed. The film acknowledges that George’s town has been irrevocably damaged. George isn’t rewarded with the fulfilment of his wishes, instead a reality is uncovered: the warm fire that can exist at the heart of any community, family, or group of friends, regardless of the situation. “No man is a failure who has friends,” the film insists, and no winter is so cold, so dark that it’s untraversable by the side of a loved one.