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"It's a Wonderful Life" is a film that we've all seen or glimpsed at some point. It's the classic Christmas movie, like "A Christmas Carol" or many dreadful, comforting family dramas. I happened to watch it in September, and it has nothing reassuring about it. Really.
Despite Frank Capra's reputation as a "singer of good feelings," here he manages to extract a decidedly dark, and in many ways, realistic portrait of human life. The life in question is that of George Bailey (an unforgettable James Stewart), a boy with a heart of gold, who sacrifices himself since childhood to help others. As he grows up, George becomes a lively and enthusiastic young man, with a thousand dreams to fulfill, carefully stored in his big suitcase, the one with which he dreams of traveling the world and building bridges, skyscrapers, and roads like no one has ever seen. However, George doesn't account for destiny: first his father's illness, then managing the family business, the war, and the marriage to the sweet and understanding Mary (Donna Reed) will never actually allow him to take off. On the contrary, every time George tries to leave Bedford Falls, something or someone stops him: and most often, it's his dedication to others, the idea that someone needs him. Although George wholeheartedly throws himself into building houses for the poor, idealistic enough to reject, in the name of his ethics, the substantial financial offers from the sly Mr. Potter (Lionel Barrymore), he starts feeling increasingly empty: his younger brother becomes a war hero, one of his dearest friends makes a fortune with a business George had turned down, his house is falling apart, and the desire to leave becomes more and more of a lump in his throat.
On Christmas day, the straw that breaks the camel's back: Uncle Bill, George Bailey's and his father's faithful collaborator, loses the company's money, which he was supposed to deposit in the bank. The money is found by the wicked Mr. Potter, who, however, doesn't return it. George doesn't know how to recover all the money, and having lost faith, thinks of killing himself to let the company cash in his life insurance money. And here enters Clarence, a clumsy apprentice angel, who must restore George's will to live and fight. Clarence takes the protagonist to an "upside-down world" where George was never born: there are no traces of the houses he built, of his family... many of his closest friends are alone or in trouble. In front of his brother's grave, the one who was saved only thanks to him, and who in the upside-down world instead is dead because no one was there to save him, George breaks down and asks to live again, to embrace once more the people he loves. And when he returns... he discovers that all his friends have come to his aid: each, in their own way, has donated something to settle the debt, thus the company is saved. George is saved. And then Clarence gives him the greatest gift: an answer to all this. A secular, pure, and very beautiful attempt to explain what a man's life is. A man's life is the bonds he builds. A man's life is that he is not alone, but from each action depend the actions of many other people. And it is in this mysterious interconnection between many, many human lives that George lives, and it is for this reason that he is the richest man in town, because he is loved. Even, and especially, when he didn't realize it.
The "happy" ending takes over only after a thousand doubts and bitterness, which are never actually resolved: because if it's true that love is a huge consolation, Frank Capra doesn't give us, but because there isn't, an answer as to why a man gives up his dreams. On why the circumstances, or other people's aspirations, end up hindering plans, ambitions. And he doesn't explain why it's so easy to get caught up in a thousand things and forget about ourselves, about what truly makes us live.
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