It's A Wonderful Life?

They call Frank Capra's film of that name the ultimate 'feel-good' film, but having once more this evening watched it I find it more dark than light. A good darkness, but one so heavy as to be quite crushing.

Let us leave aside the wondrous ministrations of Clarence, Angel Second Class bless him, the towering performance of James Stewart - and that of Donna Reed - and the indeed heart-warming rescue from disaster by the generous gifts of money from all who know how much they owe to that great man of principle George Bailey, whose unbending yearning for social justice learned from his father has kept the town Bedford Falls and not Pottersville.

So far, so granted. This though is my other reflection.

Potter, the evil beast of Mammon, hits right through to George when he tells him to his face that he, George, has always hated the fate that kept him in his home town. In saving his family, the family business and the town George has sacrificed every personal ambition or desire he ever held dear from childhood. And this has not been a gift freely given, but one that has silently wracked his spirit and his soul every waking day and moment.

George has no reply or refutation to that charge, because he knows that in some part of his heart he can hear the words of St. Paul "Though I give my body to be burnt and yet have not love..." Yes, he resists the Devil's bargain, he stands for his principles against the offer of easy money, but within him he knows that he has had to suppress deep and precious internal yearnings in order to carry on wearing the hero's crown of thorns. Providence is his duty not his desire.

For then see what happens when Uncle Billy's ever absent-minded foolishness in misplacing the $8,000 leads to near disaster for the company and everything that George has striven for over so many self-sacrificing years.

He turns brutally on Billy, lambasting him for his eternal stupidity, a character foible that until now has been both tolerated and adored. Then George goes home and worse, so much worse, rants at his children who cannot comprehend why their loving father has turned so savagely against them. He tramples on, he physically breaks, the bonds that bind him and preserve them. He reduces his daughter to frightened tears, he smashes to pieces the very fabric of the place.

George hates himself for this terrible and terrifying betrayal, and his urge for self-destruction is as much a matter of self-loathing for that as it is for any threatened loss of his life's work.

Never mind recovery of assets and reputation through friendly donations of cash. What counts - what is the real redemptive act of the film - is the forgiveness of his wife and children for the horror he inflicted so suddenly upon them. (George Bailey has had his Colonel Kurtz moment: "You must make a friend of horror...")

That then is the power and the glory of the film. George is tempted as Christ was tempted. He was offered dominion and refused it. For that he too suffered a Crucifixion of the soul. Then George rose, as Christ rose, to new life.

But as St Paul once more reminds us, to pass to new life is to pass through a death. There is no other way.

It is a wonderful life, but the wonder is found in a dark place. Clarence, Capra, the film, the studio maybe - they all let James Stewart off the hook at the end. It is not because George has friends that his life is not a failure, nor is it even that his life has done so much good that would not have happened without him.

No, it is so much more than that. It is that George can be deeply, horribly - so humanly - flawed, so out of kilter between the good the world sees and the beast that lives inside, and yet with all that can be and is redeemed.

God so loved the world that He gave His only Son that we should be saved. Saved from sin. Saved from Pottersville. Saved from our sinful ways of being. Saved from darkness into light. (I do wish sometimes I were Eastern Orthodox - they do so much understand the light.)

Merry Christmas to all. May the eternal, bright and wonderful Light of Christ shine in our dark places. We all have them.