Oh It’s a Wonderful Life
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Please note, this is an A.I. transcript of the podcast Thinking Out Loud Together. As such, it will lack the polished quality of an actual blog post. It’s provided for those who prefer reading to listening. Special thanks to Mark for volunteering to humanize the process by shaping the wording into a more readable format.
Nathan
Hello and welcome to Thinking Out Loud. I'm your cohost, Nathan Rittenhouse.
Cameron
and I'm your co-host Cameron McAllister.
Nathan
Cameron, today I would like to ask you about the components of It's a Wonderful Life. We'll start with the film, a classic for this time of the year, and then move on to what people love about that film, and finally think about what it means to have a wonderful life in 2023. So that's the trajectory we're on here. So, to start, you're the film guy. Fill us in. I'm going to go out on a limb and say, the majority of our audience has seen the film "It's a Wonderful Life" but can you give us the Cameron Spark Notes version? Bring us all up to speed.
Cameron
Well, the first thing is that most people didn't like It's a Wonderful Life when it came out. I don't know if you knew that, Nathan. This movie was a real commercial failure. The reason you, I, anybody knows about It's a Wonderful Life is actually kind of a happy accident. It was released in the public domain for a little while and for that reason got wide circulation. More and more people came to see it, and it became a classic at that point. I think it was 1946 when It's a Wonderful Life was released and my favorite critic of all time, James A.G. (wonderful, marvelous writer, love his reviews and his film essays), hated It's a Wonderful Life. This is one of those moments where you even had some of the best critics arrayed against this film. He thought it was very sentimental and it just didn't do well. Now, James Stewart (who plays George Bailey the main character of the movie) came to regard this as his favorite film he had ever done. I don't know how many movies are in James Stewart's filmography, but it's extensive. The man had a massive acting career. So, the fact that he came to view this as his finest achievement or the film that he had the fondest memories of is pretty remarkable. Of course, now It's a Wonderful Life is not regarded at all as a failure. In fact, when most people hear it was regarded as a failure, they are shocked because this is the Christmas classic for many. It seems to be carried down from generation to generation. I have seen some jokes recently about how millennials haven't embraced it as much and all of that. Nathan, you and I are in the same category here; the generation speak, it's a little annoying to me after a while. In my experience, I'm a geriatric millennial, but I grew up watching it and loved it and have cherished it and I think plenty of other people have as well.
Nathan
And I think it's safe to say that for anything with a 1946 release date, we can say whatever we want and consider that not to be a spoiler alert because; if you haven't seen it, you've had time.
Cameron
Oh yes. Oh yeah, there will be spoilers, but it's 1946, so get over it. But also, yeah, I think I saw something obscene the other day. (I'm gonna get myself in trouble here, but I don't care, because here we go) Somebody said, "You know, for us millennials, the Muppets Christmas Carol is our It's a Wonderful Life". Absolutely not. What utter nonsense.
Movie Summary
Nathan
So, summarize the film for us as best you can.
Cameron
Well, I mean, this is the story of George Bailey, (who is mostly played by James Stewart) and he lives a life of self-sacrifice. It's also worth pointing out here, Nathan, this movie is heavy going. It's heavy stuff. So as a kid, there were several scenes in this film that really upset me. So I'm going to give you a series of vignettes rather than just the boring plot summary.
The movie begins with George Bailey saving his brother's life because there's a sledding accident and his brother falls through the ice. He saves his brother's life. But then there's another scene; when I was a kid, I associated black and white films that my parents would let me watch with kind of a sentimental or softer vision of reality. And yet in the beginning parts of It's a Wonderful Life, George Bailey is an assistant for a pharmacist. The pharmacist is grief-stricken because he's lost his son and he's drunk. So, he gets the prescription wrong, and he puts the wrong pills into a bottle. And this is a mistake that would cause a fatality if this actually happened. So, George challenges the pharmacist. The pharmacist is so distraught and so upset that he starts slapping George. George sustained an injury in one of his ears from saving his brother. So, as he slaps him, then there's blood coming out of his ear in this scene. And finally, the druggist realizes the mistake he's made and is very repentant and hugs George. So, this is a film that may be accused of sentimentality, but when you watch it, I think you're gonna be surprised. It's pretty rough in some scenes.
Nathan
Yeah, so far, you're really selling it as a wonderful life.
Cameron
Right. Well, I mean, there's a whole lot of reality packed into this movie. It's worth pointing out in my colleague and friend Ken Boa has a wonderful analysis of this movie. This is one of Ken Boa's favorite movies. Ken points out that George Bailey does a lot of good things, he's a good man in most ways, but he's also a deeply flawed character. From the start of the movie, there's a there's a hardness and there's a bitterness to him. And that's absolutely true.
Another scene that upset me as a kid, is when the girl who he's gonna end up marrying is falling in love with him. But he is simultaneously realizing in this moment that if he marries her (Mary) his dream of being a world traveler, seeing the whole world getting out of Bedford Falls, also has to die. Or at least it has to take a backseat because he'll be married, he'll have a responsibility. And so, he grabs her very roughly and he shakes her and he said, "I don't want to get married". There's a rough pain to that scene and it's never comfortable watching a man shaking a woman. So, there are a lot of scenes like that and then there's the existential crisis that George goes through where he attempts suicide. And again, I'm hopping all over here, but the movie begins and ends with a prayer. The film begins with the kind of heavenly perspective of all these prayers for George Bailey.
So, the movie sort of begins at that crisis point, and then you get the context in the whole story for Gabriel, the angel, who is deployed to help George. And so that's when you get his history, how he grew up, all of that, and then leading all the way up to that point of crisis, where he comes to a place where he just feels like he has completely wasted his life, that he's destitute. Now he's also in a place where the villain of his life, his enemy and really the villain of the town, Mr. Potter, is going to drive him out of business and he'll be financially ruined. So, he has spent his whole life giving everything away, living self-sacrificially, and now he's come to a point where it seems like there's no reward whatsoever for any of that behavior. In other words, "I gave everything away and this is where it led me. To this house that's decrepit and falling apart, my finances which are now destroyed, and my enemy who's gonna triumph over me, and my whole family, everybody looking at me, everybody depending on me", and he goes and he tries to jump off a bridge. And then of course there's that amazing creative thought experiment where his guardian angel Gabriel responds to him saying, "I wish I'd never been born", and Gabriel just says, "oh, okay, you were never born".
And then, George Bailey gets a tour of the world that would have transpired in his absence. And of course, his brother is not alive because he wasn't able to save his brother from falling in the ice. His brother was a decorated war hero so all of that is also undone. The pharmacist is now an alcoholic and a despondent drunk because he wasn't there to intervene and stop him from making that mistake with the prescriptions. And the whole town has been taken over by Potter. In a fun little side note here, Nathan, the second back to the future movie borrowed pretty heavily from this, some might even say stole. Where Marty McFly goes back and the whole town has been taken over by Biff. That's definitely borrowed from It's a Wonderful Life where if George has not been born then Bedford Falls is Pottersville, a kind of modern vanity fare. I think that can count as a synopsis of the film through a series of vignettes of the heavy doses of reality built in. And it is a sentimental film, but sentimentality is not always a bad thing. And I think it's a good film.
Staying Power
Nathan
So, what's the staying power there? Because is the audience supposed to then come away with a recognition, sympathy, and empathy? I have difficult things in my life, and I think anybody who's living with any attempt of intentionality, or perhaps even if not, will experience that. There are the ups and downs, there's the brokenness, times in which we are called on to give sacrificially, maybe even beyond what we want to do. And then the continual adding up in addition of the mass of all these little troubles and struggles in life gets us to the point where we at some point look around and say, "is this what this is all about and is this all this has gotten me to". So, I think it pulls everybody in and puts everybody into that sensation. And then I guess the optimistic flip there is to say, "yeah but could you imagine the world if your life hadn't been?". And helping people see the impact that they've actually had in some ways gives a glimmer of hope that there's a fruitfulness to our lives that we can't actually see but is still meaningful.
Cameron
Yes, I mean, there are a number of different ways of responding to that. First and foremost, it's a really well-made film, and that just has to be stated because time, the harshest of all critics, levels almost everything that's come out. Now, more so than ever, innumerable movies and books and cultural artifacts are released and most of them will never be remembered. And that doesn't necessarily mean they're all bad, but most of them are forgettable. They're here for a time and then they're gone. And that's true of most eras. But those that have staying power, and sometimes it takes a happy accident (public domain) but in the end, quality speaks for itself. So, I think first and foremost, this is a great film. Frank Capra made a wonderful movie, and it's well put together. It has all the features of a good film. It's got great pacing, it has fantastic acting, and complex and rich characters. That's what saves it from being a merely sentimental Christmas story. So, I would say that the movie White Christmas with Bing Crosby; I'll put my cards on the table, I can't stand that movie. I know a lot of people love it and that it's a Christmas classic. But It's mainly remembered for its soundtrack, you know, Bing Crosby's crooner voice and all of that. But that is a film that I would say is purely sentimental. And people love it and cherish it mainly because of a nostalgia element. I would say that is not the case with It's a Wonderful Life. It has some sentimental elements in it; most people remember the line from the little girl at the end, "every time a bell rings, the angel gets his wings". But it's much more than the sum of its parts. This is a film with very rich characters.
What also gives it staying power, Nathan, is the spiritual vision behind the movie. Now, I wouldn't characterize this as an orthodox movie and to call it a Christian movie might be a bit of a stretch. But it's a very spiritual film. It begins and ends with prayer, it doesn't give you a conventional picture of God, this sort of flashing, glowing galaxy is God talking and he has a very grumpy sort of voice "You know, my servant George Bailey, he's in despair". The angelology is a little bit unique. This is a creative story really about the endurance of the human spirit and very much about relationships. George Bailey is a rich man and you see that at the end of this movie, but he's not wealthy. It's not that he's prosperous in a material sense. He's wealthy in relationships. He's rich in relationships. And I think there is a nostalgic element to this film too, but in a more moving sense than with something like White Christmas. In this film, I think for some viewers, there's a longing for a world that no longer exists now. And Ken Boa points this out, a lot of critics have pointed this out. I think this is a point that you'll find interesting, Nathan. I think you actually mentioned it when we were talking, It's a Wonderful Life is a world that we don't have anymore. Not just in the sense of the values that are cherished in the movie, but also the sense of the kind of community that you have at Bedford Falls where you have a neighborliness that still exists today, but it is way more difficult to find it. And when you have it, when it's pursued, it takes a whole lot more intentionality these days. People had to depend on one another more intimately in the past because it was more of a necessity. Not the case as much in our doordash online world where many of us are in suburbs; where it's entirely possible to live in a huge neighborhood and know almost nobody or maybe two or three people.
All films are time stamped and give you glimpses into bygone eras. That's one of the values of cinema, you get to look back in time and It's a Wonderful Life definitely gives you a glimpse back into a world that no longer exists. So, I think that gives it a staying power as well. People remember that fondly. They remember an America that isn't here anymore. We can complicate that a little bit Nathan, for instance, the Bailey household does have an African American maid, and so there are clearly aspects of this world that we can celebrate as now being part of the past. So, I just wanna add again that films are timestamps, and when that movie was made, the decision to feature that in there was probably not a self-conscious one at all. That just merely reflected the social reality of the film as it was made. And it's valuable to see that, so we have those historical markers, which are there to give us that needed perspective. It can guard against an unhealthy nostalgia. But still, there are healthy forms of nostalgia, where we can lament, "why don't we have that sense of community anymore, those social bonds, those shared values". By shared values, I mean shared values about family, the importance of not just relationships that you choose, but your obligation to your neighbors, and also the sense that those are essential bonds. Also, this wouldn't have even been spelled out, but there is no controversy on what it means to be a person, the movie assumes that being a human being means you are an essentially spiritual and relational creature with bonds and obligation to all of those around you.
Choices and Community
Cameron
All of that is contested these days. In fact, Nathan, I want to throw this out here and then I want you to run with it for a bit because I think here's a striking contrast between the world of It's a Wonderful Life and so many of the holiday specials that we see today. It's a Wonderful Life gives you a picture of neighborliness, of thick community that was more of a necessity than a luxury. And most of the holiday episodes of TV shows these days or movies, especially the Thanksgiving and the Christmas ones, usually revolve around the fact that the friends in the show didn't choose their families and they have a hard time with their families. But they're so grateful for their friends because this is their chosen; these are their chosen family. And so, that's the precise opposite of what's going on in It's a Wonderful Life, where you have a world where you didn't choose these people. And that's part of the basic limitations of humanity, you were born into a certain place in time with these family members, whether you like them or not. And we must learn to pursue those lines of obligation in a holistic way. Whereas now, choice needs to be at the forefront of all of your relationships. And that's a really interesting point of contrast. I'd love to get some of your response to that, Nathan.
Nathan
I was thinking, not as eloquently put, along those categories earlier. Let's think, how many pharmacies were there in Bedford Falls? One. How many diners? One. You know, there is only one of everything. And so, there isn't a choice of which diner you go to. There isn't a choice of which grocery store do you go to. There isn't a choice of who is your mailman. There's a sense in which you don't have choices. In 1946, Amazon is not going to deliver your Christmas. So, there was a real limitation on the boundaries of your choices, but that meant that you had to navigate and negotiate the complexities of what you had to deal with. If you didn't like your neighbor, you're probably going to have to figure out how to work that out because not interacting with them wasn't an option. And that's one of the things of the past that I think built thick community, and let's not act like it was all glorious and wonderful. That's the complexity that I see there, when you talk about things that bind Communities and groups together, part of it is the lack of option that you have for something else, that's woven in there. I was reading a collection of essays by the poet Donald Hall and the collection was called "String Too Short to be Saved" and he has a line in one of those where it says, "nostalgia was self-hatred". But the preceding line, I can't quite recall, is something like “when we become dismayed with the anarchy that we experience in the present, we begin to long for the order of the past". And so, when you get really frustrated with how things are in your life right now, you start looking to the past as a form of escapism from the complexity and the difficulties of your life that you experience now.
So, I would separate out the distinction between nostalgia and memory. If Nostalgia is a form of escapism, then it’s an unhealthy thing to try to retreat to the past and it will probably manifest itself in unhealthy ways in our personal lives and in the relationships in the communities that we're forming now. However, if you can remember good and beautiful and wonderful things of the past or things that you need to learn from the past, I think that also is a wonderful thing. And that's a gift. So, memory is not a form of escapism. It's saying, "what are the elements and the features here that are part of what a truly wonderful life entails?" and then "how do I learn from them moving forward?". Fundamentally, it's a "looking back in order to find your footing to move forward" type of enterprise. And so, I think we can do that even with what you were just talking about. When it comes to community, you're not going to find a Bedford falls in America, it's a different time. But there are still really good communities. And Cameron, sometimes you kind of self-deprecatingly refer to the suburb life that you live; but in a time of crisis, you still have neighbors who stop by. I think the difference is that if there are components of something like "It's a Wonderful Life" that you value, then we all have to recognize that those are all still possible. But they don't come naturally or easily anymore, you have to cultivate them.
Cameron
You have to pursue them intentionally, yeah.
Nathan
Yeah, you won't accidentally find yourself in community anymore. So, Cameron, the fact that when you have an issue, people reach out; it's because of the work that you and your wife have put in; getting to know the neighbor's kids at the swimming pool and the who's walking their dog at what time. And when somebody goes out to get the mail and Mr. So-and-so does what, and they have a problem and you help them with their car. What I mean is, that's still how the world works and it's there and it's real, but it does require a renewed sense of effort on our part to make those connections. The underlying factor here is the same as the self-sacrificial giving of time and energy and interest in other people's lives. If you want to ask, "what's the buy-in in order to form community?", it would be that sacrificial giving and reflex to help even if you don't fully know all the details or if it doesn't make sense at the time. The thoughts dancing around in my mind right now are: What is the same? What is similar? What is necessary? What is possible? What can we remember and smile about but not try to hide in?
Cameron
That's good and the ending of the film works along those lines as well, it bears that out. George and his whole family have poured themselves out for the community and then in their moment of crisis everybody comes to their aid. There's nothing unrealistic about that. When people who are known for being very giving, who have lived their lives giving to others self-sacrificially; when such a person finds themselves in a time of profound crisis and they ask for help, they tend to get it in droves. This is a basic reality of human life. We forget this nowadays too, because America sometimes in the background operates with a really vicious sort of social Darwinism. "You just got to get ahead", "only the strong survive", "competition is good", "ruthless capitalism", that sort of thing. That's kind of like the dark side of our fierce sense of innovation and our fix-it, can-do, attitude. But the truth is, that's actually false anthropology, which is a mercy, wonderful news. Life is actually not fiercely Darwinistic. It's not this massive, horrible struggle. When my father was growing up, his dad bought into this a little bit and he talked about it in terms of a big wolf and a little wolf and the big wolf survive and devour everybody else and the little wolves get killed. But actually, when you find a real crisis happening, people help you. People come to one another's aid. This is part of the human spirit, as I would call it. That's not some mystical observation, that's based on the hard evidence of life. Nathan, you've gone through times of crisis, I've gone through times of crisis. Not by accident, both Nathan and I belong to churches, good churches. Good in the sense that the people who love the Lord and love their neighbor. And so guess what? People have taken care of us. I've been on the receiving end. The ending of "It's a Wonderful Life" doesn't look unrealistic or like some tacked on happy ending. That looks like life as I recognize it.
Nathan
Yeah, it's not sentimental to say that we bear one another's burdens. It's a biblical reality. You can see it as a command but it is also just a description of the way that community supports and takes care of itself. So yeah, I'm with you on that. I guess here's what's sad to me, George is not a religious person in this film from my memory. It's not like you would say he has a deep spiritual life at all.
Cameron
No, there's a scene where he does pray out of desperation. It's a very atheistic kind of prayer, "Lord, I'm not a praying man".
Reality, Goodness, and Our Role in It
Nathan
Okay, here's what I see as the difference, Cameron. I was actually using these words in my mind to think about discipleship, formation. What is it that we're trying to train our kids to do? What is it that our parents were training? What were my parents training me to do? And I think the words that popped into my mind were like, to go and to go and to go, to give and to give and to give, and to live a life where you're trying to bless, not impress or invest; and then to come to the end of it and lay down to die with a grin. I think that's kind of really short metanarrative of what life looks like. But a key question is, can you do that with a deep sense of satisfaction all throughout it? George doesn't have that. But if you look at the teachings of Jesus on the self-sacrificial life of the giving, and the caring, and the investing, and the going, and the doing, and the prioritizing what's really important in life; then he says, "my peace I give you not as the world gives". I think the part that's missing in "It's a Wonderful Life" is to see you actually can live that life and experience the joy of doing it throughout. It doesn't need to end in a time on a bridge where you're saying, "was this all for nothing"? And you can also pray, "Lord, help me do the right thing, even if I never see the fruit of my effort".
For most of us there's not going to be an angel that shows up to show us what the world would look like if we never existed. Is that a motivation in life to say, "I'm going to live my life in such a way that if I get to the end of it and look back, it’s better than if I'd never existed."? That seems to me to be unnecessarily complicated and complex and maybe a bit philosophically naive and unproductive. So, is there a better vision that we could have? Perhaps, "Not because of the goodness of my own heart, but because of what Christ is shaping and forming in me"? These are the attributes of a self-sacrificial life that I want to live, but (and this is the key distinction) I can find a deep level of satisfaction and say, "this is a wonderful life" all the way through it, rather than just at the end in hindsight. So, that would be my hope for me as I live this out, but also as I teach my children what it means to be a follower of Jesus. And I think for anybody listening to this as well, that It's a Wonderful Life, as a film, pushes on some buttons that we can all recognize. But the gospel offers this good news of great joy to all people. There's another layer to this cake that adds color to it, which I think we don't want to miss out on and we want to see as part of the beauty of what's happening at this time of year.
Cameron
Yeah, and I think I want to return really quickly as a parting thought to that observation from Donald Hall, why would nostalgia be self-hatred? Well, if you dwell on that for a second, I think that there are various aspects to nostalgia, not all of them necessarily bad, but self-hatred would be a kind of nostalgia that keeps you haunting some kind of a past in your mind or always going back to a past. Usually, a sentimentalized version of the past that didn't really exist in the first place. What I mean by that is when people say, "oh, times were simpler back then", maybe in some ways but in other ways that's not the case. You may have had less responsibilities or your memory may be a little bit more sanitized. The world has fallen and times are always complex and difficult and there are always lots of constraints in any time.
But, why would it be self-hatred? Because if you live in the past in your mind, that's going to cause you to neglect the world you're in now, the present. And if you're not careful, you'll turn your back on the people who need you most now. You won't be present for those who need you now. And so that's why that's a shrewd observation. And that's why we may watch something like It's a Wonderful Life and lament and there are losses. We don't have that kind of thick community, not naturally, it doesn't come as naturally anymore. And that's true, doesn't mean it isn't possible, doesn't mean we can't have it, and doesn't mean we shouldn't be about the business of pursuing it.
Nathan
Yeah, but the flip side of that is that a modern despair with the way things are in the world, or even in the phrase self-hatred, is in and of itself a focus on self. And so what a wonderful life is pointing at is (and we can way up that as Christians and say) this idea of self-sacrificing and giving and considering the needs of others and bearing one another's burdens and looking for ways in which we can serve and be helpful and support and encourage; are all outward facing expressions of the ways in which we want to focus and use our time and our energy in our lives. I think there's a hope that actually comes from that, we all know this. The happiest people we know are the people who invest the most heavily in other people's lives. And some of the most miserable people we know are those who are pursuing their own self-interest at all cost. And so, Joy to the World has some teeth to it here. When we start thinking about where is our appropriate focus; on what is real, what is good, and what is my role in it. One of my favorite lines from the hymn is "long lay the world in sin and error pining till he appeared, and the soul felt its worth. The thrill of hope, a weary world rejoices for yonder breaks a new and glorious morn". And then the "fall on your knees" as a worshipful response to the beauty of that truth.
Ultimately, only when our eyes are fixed upward and elsewhere do we find the proper worship, but then also the proper way in which we live our lives. Which then as a byproduct, I think we do find to be quite wondrous and meaningful as we pursue these other goods and glorious things. So, perhaps It's a Wonderful Life will come across your screen at some point in the next few weeks, but if not, or if you've never seen it, a wonderful life is something that is offered to you. And we're reminded about part of that great plan as we celebrate Christmas together with our friends and family and fellow brothers and sisters in Christ. You've been listening to Thinking Out Loud, a podcast where we think out loud about current events and Christian hope.