Its A Wonderful Life

It’s A Wonderful Life

Over tea and arguments, normal,y I would start because I don’t want this in my day. Frankly, it’s a film I was trying to avoid. It’s fair to say I’ve seen it before. But in parts. Fra my day. 

The main bit I remember being repeated a lot is the scene where George Bailey visits his brother Harry’s grave. The main thing being if he had not saved Harry, Harry would not have lived to protect people in the war. Well. What about the times you fail to keep someone? Was the first thing on my mind. I lost someone through an accident at a Christmas party. Indeed by this token, if it were me rather than them…was what fluttered through my mind.

It was sentimental ana d of an st bit of angel talk and a sense of providence that does not work in the real world. I often thought about going high fantasy or going home if you’re going to bring god into this..’ what does god need with a cinema’?

Pablum is a small town. But a friend was running late and I was in town. Despite trying two other cinemas to find a place to pass two hours, I ended up back at prince Charles begrudgingly. It was the first cinema I saw, and I was …not want to see that. Stuff just handed tritely at the end, like an angel and its wings.

So I sat down, put my phone on silent, and just took it in as an actual film in a real cinema, with real people. Many had come as ‘the ritual’ of Christmas.

Worth it. Don’t let the talk of odd bod Clarence, the second-class angel we often see in the greatest hits. It’s minimal. According to Garp, the bulk of the film is there with the world. It’s a comi-tragic tale of a young man growing up with middle-class yet modest means and working as a child in a store while going to school and becoming a young man high with ambition and little direction other than not his father’s building society. 

We care a man leading his life away in enabling others to live theirs. As are about tch George develops, this man is of a high spirit; although circumstances are minimal at once, they continue to delay his dream. For me, that is where my frustration lay.

However, it is hard to deny the benefit to the community of his creation of Bailey park. The elevation of life, particularly with the warm and stalwart attitude of his wife Mary to become a heart of a community, could win anyone over.

, George; the not invests in plastics with his old friend Sam and is much poorer for it. Although Sam is effectively a war profiteer, he manages h. own sense of tony stark by the end of the film, And it’s not overly sentimental; the bad guys do not ‘get caught’ Potter ends the film eight grand richer but with an even smaller soul; there is no redemption for him..

The house they live in is ruinous. It reminded me of my parents’ one when we were little, my brother and me. Clapham was not Walkertown then (82), and the subsidence meant we could not afford an actual front door as the money was going on keeping the stairs from cracking. But the warmth of that house. Of a parent coming in, so tired and so late, yet so filled with the need to see us. It is hard not to remember.

You know the story to a degree. I mean the plot is not a memento. But he was watching a man realize that his journey to the larger world means nothing to the richness of his own home. And what can be explored through love and friendship..really hit me.

It’s not an easy watch. It’s bitter at times and jarring at others. But the sense of the town’s rallying was important. And how things are not about the big wins in life. It’s about the constant improvement of the things around us that creates a society.

Merry Christmas. The audience applauded. They do it every year.

I gave a few claps…I mean…it’s Christmas. 

See it correctly on a screen with undivided attention. It’s worth it.