Bailey's Reckoning

It's a headline you might not want your children, or any friends buoyed by the rituals of the holidays, to see: Wonderful? Sorry, George, It’s a Pitiful, Dreadful Life. So expounds Wendell Jamieson in Thursday's New York Times, offering his take on It's a Wonderful Life, Frank Capra's now-classic film that becomes all but inescapable during the holidays. Jamieson appreciates the film, but not as an affirmation of individual worth and goodness in the world. "It’s a Wonderful Life is a terrifying, asphyxiating story about growing up and relinquishing your dreams," he writes, "of seeing your father driven to the grave before his time, of living among bitter, small-minded people. It is a story of being trapped, of compromising, of watching others move ahead and away, of becoming so filled with rage that you verbally abuse your children, their teacher and your oppressively perfect wife. It is also a nightmare account of an endless home renovation."

This is how I've seen it too. I've been stunned by the rawness of Bailey's building desperation and the vehemence of its release. Like Jamieson, I see Bailey's descent into hopelessness as the film's most powerful and authentic element. There is a reality to it, rooted in common experience, which is lacking in Bailey's triumphant emergence from his journey through the underworld of the might-have-been with Clarence the angel.

I wonder if that's why I never emerge with him. By the time Bailey leaps from the bridge to save Clarence I more or less concur with him that life is futile and our situations tend to conspire against getting what we want or deserve. As Bailey pulls the wingless angel to shore, I keep floating downstream, slipping beneath that shelf ice. Continuing to watch, I'm too numb to take inspiration from his redemption at the end of the film. That redemption is too sudden, the break with his disappointments too clean.

Jamieson does not come away from the film so dispirited. The closing scene where Bailey's brother Harry pronounces him "the richest man in the world" chokes him up, he confesses. Granted, I'm prone to depression. Though people often call IAWL a piece of fluff, I'd recommend it for resilient or habitually cheerful minds only.

Jamieson shares another of my reactions to the movie. Had Bailey never been born, Clarence shows him, wholesome (if sleepy) Bedford Falls would have become Pottersville, a heartless pocket of vice and misery. Audiences are expected to shudder at this dismal locale, but to Jamieson, Pottersville "looks like much more fun than stultifying Bedford Falls — the women are hot, the music swings, and the fun times go on all night. If anything, Pottersville captures just the type of excitement George had long been seeking." I wouldn't mind hanging with Bailey at the roadhouse for a while, drowning the sorrow provoked by the film's midsection. It occurs to me sometimes that if someone out there had never been born, my neighborhood could have been a lively adult entertainment district. Jamieson opines that Beford Falls might actually have been better off as one too: "In one scene George helps bring manufacturing to Bedford Falls. But since the era of It’s a Wonderful Life manufacturing in upstate New York has suffered terribly.... On the other hand, Pottersville, with its nightclubs and gambling halls, would almost certainly be in much better financial shape today. It might well be thriving."

Needless to say, I usually avoid watching the movie, though sometimes relatives will have it on in the background at holiday parties, and sometimes I will sit though part of it. And while the ending is lost on me, I can imagine a compelling sequel to the film growing straight out of that ending. It is possible to appreciate and even love a life that isn't the one you hoped for, but prior disappointments seldom fall away completely in the process. How do you move ahead, living out a faith in self and community, in spite of older wounds inflicted by both? Plenty of films and novels have taken up similar questions; I think George Bailey, with his caring but impulsive personality, forging on among the upright but sometimes un-neighborly denizens of Bedford Falls, would be an excellent vehicle for seeking one more answer.