It's a Wonderful Life

My wife loves this movie. Two videotape copies are not enough, apparently, so she bought the DVD. We watched it last night. First, the DVD transfer looked great.

And it's still the best Christmas movie ever. Except that it's not really a Christmas movie, it's a movie where Christmas serves to catalyze the plot. It combines optimism with resentment in a way that is not really sentimental at all. George Bailey really is trapped in his life, and he spends a lot of time feeling sorry for himself. He thinks he's a failure. Things have not worked out like he planned, and at that level, most of us as we approach mid-life can relate to that.

And while the end of the movie is happy, there's loss too. The immediate crisis is resolved, but the savings and loan will continue to limp along. One can imagine that had the savings and loan been ruined, George would be able to start over and realize his dreams. But George is not getting out of Bedford Falls. There's no starting over. The happy ending is not that George's life is going to turn around. It's that he's been able to reconcile himself with the life he's got. The title of the film, "It's a Wonderful Life" is at first ironic, but at the end, it isn't.