12 Days of Christmas Movies: "'It's a Wonderful Life' is a wonderful mirror for audiences"

I was still pretty young when I first took an interest in classic cinema. A lot of that is because of what was on tap in my parents' home video collection. Back in the olden-timey days, long before the miraculous advent of digital download, if there was a movie on TV that you wanted to keep, you had a couple of go-to options to acquire it:

You could either go down the video store and purchase your very own VHS copy. Or, you could be a rebel and record it onto a blank tape with your very own tape-recorder. Guess which method we employed the most when I was growing up?

By the time I was 10 years old I had already seen Alistair Sim's version of "Scrooge" (which I'm contractually obligated to talk about in a later essay), the Gregory Peck adaptation of "Moby Dick", and even a few staples of the silent-film era ("Nosferatu" and "Phantom of the Opera" were always some of my favorites).

Unlike a lot of my friends and peers from school, black-and-white movies were another part of the norm when it came to picking out your next afternoon-in. My dad was especially fond of them - I remember being as young as 5-year-old and watching him watching movies on TV in the no-man's-land time-slot of 4 am (we liked to get up early back then).

So once I was old enough to graduate to the real meat-and-potatoes of Golden-Age Hollywood, it was pretty much inevitable that I would join my dad one Christmas Eve for a viewing of Frank Capra's It's a Wonderful Life (1954?).

Now I do have to admit to one thing that might shock a lot of people: I wasn't particularly impressed when I first saw it.

For one thing, it felt too long in places. For another, it wasn't even set during Christmas-time until the tail-end of the last act. The black-and-white film wasn't what I found most disturbing - it was the fact that a grown-man in his forties was supposed to be playing a 20-something during the 1920's.

(Although I did get a kick out of watching the Charleston-dance scene... and the subsequent shenanigans that followed.)

As a then-youngster, I was kind of like the audience members who first saw it upon it's release: it was a cute movie, just not particularly interesting.

Fast forward over 20 years later and now it is one of my absolute must-see's during the holidays. I love it as much as life itself and defend it in every which way possible, I am not even kidding.

In my experience, It's a Wonderful Life is one of those rare movies that truly wins you over, even if you don't fully appreciate it at first glance. I think a lot of that is because there is a genuine timeless quality to it which makes it surprisingly accessible.

Allow me to illustrate:

Forget for a moment that it is shot in black-and-white; forget about the fact that it was shot and set during the first-half of the 20th century; forget that their clothes are no longer fashionable, or that the cars and buildings seem antiquated. Forget about the trimmings and consider the real points of drama sprinkled throughout the narrative.

You have every-day intrigue from every-day people;

You've got a greedy old-fart who thinks he's entitled to the world (but does nothing to earn it);

You've got financial straits, a housing-crisis, young-love and marriage, the stresses of family-life...

(There are times when this movie really does hit a little too close to home...)

Though the times may be different, the problems are still relatively the same. And, so are the relationships as a result.

But unlike a lot of it's contemporary counterparts, director Frank Capra heralds the film with a touch of sincerity. There are many, many moments of humor and levity sprinkled throughout the film, but it is stands well-balanced against the somber moments of drama. This movie, when compared to other modern classics, possesses a grounding sense of reality; it's as if it is saying, "yes, this is life - the good, the bad, and the totally mundane... it just, simply is."

I think the reason people are still drawn to this movie is because it is so relatable - and doesn't make the mistake of playing-coy to the audience.

On a personal note, this movie means a lot to me because, for a while, I felt a lot like George Bailey. Without diving too deep into the gory details, I felt like an absolute failure at that point in my life; I felt like I was being left behind somehow, despite all my hard work. I saw my friends and classmates and even members of my family going off to bigger and better things, and I just felt... well, stuck.

I felt like I had gone wrong somewhere along the line, and that God had given up on me because of it.

That's when I remembered I had a dvd copy of this movie. It was mid-July, and watched the crap out of it for three days straight. And you know something amazing? It actually helped. A lot.

While I never felt so desperate as to visit the nearest bridge (thank God!), I so badly wanted to give up on myself. Realizing that, once upon a time, there were people with the same struggles and the same doubts, but were still loved despite their failings, that was enough of a kick in the pants to get me going again.

The central message of the story is summed up perfectly in Clarence's book just before the closing credits: "No [one] is a failure, who has friends."

Life is messy - life is weird - life will kick you down and knock your front teeth out just for laughs. But life is also genuinely wonderful, when you remember that no one is living it alone.

Now go grab a friend, do the Charleston, and avoid indoor pools at all costs!