It's a Wonderful Life earns its ending and then some - a post for a guy named Joe
The biggest misnomer about “It’s a Wonderful Life” is that it’s cheesy. The title and the Christmas connection/association being good reason for the misconception. That said, with a movie that ends as happily as this one does, why then is it so wrong to call a movie that is the very definition of sentimental not cheesy?
Two simple reasons:
Cheesy in narrative terms is the definition of say a bad romantic comedy where no emotion is earned and you knew they’d get together in the end anyway. Or worse, when a character is dying of cancer and it’s all a cheap ploy to pull on the old heartstrings. For us to care about Harry and Sally to get together, they have to have fought to get to that ending. And I’m not sure I know of a movie that earns its ending like It’s a Wonderful life because of:
The fact that it’s one of the — if not THE — darkest Christmas movie of them all (“Die Hard” very much included). The searing pain and suffering George Bailey must endure as we get to the film’s climax … you needn’t have lived as an adult for very long to understand these things. A professor I had in undergrad once defined Shakespeare’s comedies as being in some ways more tragic than the tragedies right up until their endings. That they were really only defined as comedies because of their happy endings. This is Frank Capra’s greatest movie to a T.
I think I’m writing this for a fella named Joe who I know, who like me, struggles with old movies and has never been able to get through this particular black and white picture. Mostly I think the struggle is about not being able to suspend disbelief on account of stylized acting, the manner of talking, not to mention perhaps outdated effects that are hard to buy into. These things are all true of our movies now as well, to be sure, we just can’t see them because we grew up with them. It’ll all look and sound dated soon enough.
But I’ve seen this particular old movie countless times. Like my friend Ben who has seen more even than me, and who I needed to write 16 texts to today as I rewatched yet again with my daughter. “It’s a Wonderful Life” gets my vote for the greatest movie of all time. Why?
Because it’s really funny. Because when it isn’t really funny it slows down enough to present one of my all-time favourite love stories. But like anyone who has fallen for this film and can never get enough of it, the real reason, above and beyond or maybe right there shotgun alongside the towering performance that James Stewart delivers (every bit as top-shelf as anything Pacino or De Niro have ever done), is that no movie has more heart and touches so deep and so true on the very struggle of what it means to be an adult. In cynical times to call something sentimental seems especially negative, but the word itself does not necessarily have negative connotations.
Really I’m posting this because I just finished watching it with my daughter who is eight. Probably too young for a movie so dark but she handled it right up to the end when finally there is reason to sing and to rejoice and my little girl turned to her daddy and said, Why are you crying? Because yet again, like every year, I was. I so totally was. The tears streaming. The catharsis healing.
Atta boy Clarence ;)
Now go watch it, Joe. Trust me!