a favorite movie

This is gonna be about "It's a Wonderful Life," which I know is somewhat polarizing in our culture. If you loathe the movie, just don't read.

(I don't have the emotional energy to say "fight me" about this, but really, it is one of my favorite movies of all time. Not just for Christmas, of all movies I've ever seen.)

I like it, in large part, because it presents a world, a reality, better than our own. Especially in 2017, which seems to have been the year of getting "people do terrible things to one another" smashed in your face again and again (like Jimmy Cagney smashing a grapefruit into Mae Clark's face), it's a nice bit of idealism.

And yeah, even as I've said I've had the idealism beat out of me by 2016 and 2017, I think it's still in there, somewhere, deep down. Maybe cowering in a fetal position, but it's still there.

And yeah, there are terrible people - or at least one terrible person  - in It's A Wonderful Life. But the majority of people are at least shown as decent people. People who care about one another.

The bit at the beginning, where different people - Mr. Gower the pharmacist, and Mr. Martini, and Bert the cop, and Ernie the taxi driver, and his own family - all pray for him. That part ALWAYS gets me. Especially the people who are not Bailey's family. (Even as I know I have prayed for people I was not related to).

It's always a striking movie to watch through (I watched it on USA last night, and though they stick in ads - I wish they wouldn't, but I get that they feel they have to). You remember the parts with Clarence, but really, he doesn't show up until more than halfway through the movie. The first part is all scene-setting - all showing first, why George Bailey is a man worthy of saving, and second, what the events were that led up to his near-downfall. (spoiler alert: not his fault, beyond maybe, "what would have been different if he'd taken money to the bank instead of Uncle Billy")

George is a good guy - I think the complaint some people have against the movie is that he's TOO good, that he's given up all his big dreams in order to help others. But it seems to me that there are an awful lot of people I've known in my life who have, like George, sighed, and figuratively cancelled their trips around the world, because somehow they were needed at home.

But there's other stuff George has done all his life - the whole reason Mr. Gower is praying for him is that George, as a kid, working in the pharmacy, caught that a distressed (and drunk) Gower put poison rather than medicine in some pills. (Mr. Gower was distraught over the death of his son). George, despite being yelled at to "just deliver them," does not, and gets slapped around for his trouble - until Gower sobers up enough to realize what he almost did.

And of course, upon the sudden death of his father, he takes over the "building and loan." (I admit I'm not totally familiar with these. I assume they are similar to the Savings and Loans that became infamous in the 1980s, because so many of them failed because of problems with interest rates - I guess they had loaned out at a low rate, and then the Feds raised the interbank rates, and....things got bad. I just remember it being another Bad Thing in the news when I was young).  And Bailey does keep the place afloat, in one case sacrificing the money collected for his honeymoon.

(And yeah, I know: "No one is that good." But I want to believe it).

The idea presented is that Bailey is for the "little guy" and Potter was the "greedy banker." And yeah, I know some people argue it's an anti-capitalist movie, except I don't think it really is. I think it's more anti-greed, or pro-trying-not-to-have-it-be-so-unfair-to-the-little-guy.

One thing I did notice in the movie this year - at one point Potter almost says something along the lines of "but he eats and drinks with sinners" and I realized, even more on this viewing: perhaps Capra was intending to show that George, even though he doesn't really do much "God talk,' learned his Sunday School lessons well....the whole being willing to be self-sacrificing for the good of others.

And yet, and yet....as the title of the movie points out, George wound up with a better life than he might have otherwise. He has a loving family, he has a purpose, he has the respect of many other people in town.

But, like a lot of us, George isn't that happy....when things go badly, they go really badly. And it's capped with Uncle Billy being Uncle Billy, and the unfortunate fact that Potter wound up with the $8000 by mistake - and you get the feeling that literally ANY OTHER person in town, upon opening that newspaper, would have gone "Oh, no, Uncle Billy!" and tracked him down to return the cash....

And so George melts down, because he feels responsible. He shakes Uncle Billy, he blows up at his family (making at least two of his kids cry), and he storms out of the house, the words of Potter (who knows very well what is happening) "You're worth more dead than alive" echoing in his ears....

and enter Clarence. And the part of the story everyone remembers happens: what would be the case if George Bailey never existed?

(And yeah, yeah, I admit discomfort at the "What if Mary Hatch had never married" bit because, as I speculated this year:"maybe we're in the timeline where my soulmate actually never existed" but then again the 1940s are not today - thank God - and I suspect Mary Hatch was paid almost nothing and had to live in a rooming house and was miserable.)

And as I've said many times: George Bailey was lucky. The rest of us rabble, out here working and paying and living and dying just have to assume that what we're doing with our lives has some good effect. And while I doubt any of us could be linked to saving the lives of a whole destroyer full of men (because George saved his kid brother, who went on - as a war hero - to save all those lives), I suppose we do SOME good, it's just hard to see.

And the ending. Yeah, I know, some people have argued the ending is unrealistic. But honestly, in this world now of Go Fund Me and Kiva and similar - aren't there are lot of people out there, figuratively, running around with laundry baskets asking people to throw in a buck or two, and the "missing $8000" is made up that way? (And yes....the bank examiner even throws in his own buck - proving he's not such a bad guy. And the person with the warrant for Bailey's arrest tears it up).

And I know a lot of people have talked about wanting to see Potter get his (and I guess there was a Saturday Night Live sketch that involved the townspeople banding together to go beat the tar out of Potter?) But. For one thing, no one really knows that Potter found and kept the money. And second, I like that the movie ends on a purely loving note - that all the "rabble" George helped have come to his aid (quite the opposite of what Potter speculated would happen) and things are made right, though made right by the sacrifices of people who have little (but then again: all those times George sacrificed for them).

I also think of the words (that I quote from time to time here) of my grad-school buddy Craig, who, when I was talking about a terrible boss I had at the time, someone who literally made me cry (and I was tougher in some ways as a 20-something than I am now): "You just have to work with her. She has to live with herself." And while I suspect the Mr. Potters of the world don't feel the same kind of horror and guilt that a decent person would over having done wrong, still....if Mr. Potter found himself in some difficulty, who would come to his aid? Would people as readily pray for him as they did for George Bailey? Would Mr. Martini, or Bert, or Annie throw a few dollars (hard-earned dollars) towards helping him out? And perhaps that's the real punishment of Mr. Potter: that he's alone, that he doesn't have people who care about him.