At one point in Frank Capra’s “It’s A Wonderful Life,” George Bailey tells Mr. Potter, “the meanest and richest man in town,” what he really thinks of him.
You sit around here and you spin your little webs and you think the whole world revolves around you and your money. Well, it doesn’t, Mr. Potter. In the whole vast configuration of things, I’d say you were nothing but a scurvy little spider!
He lets it fly, and the spider metaphor lands right on the jaw. And I think it gets to something even deeper about the movie.
Many Christmas movies tell how a Grinch or a Scrooge comes to open his heart. “It’s A Wonderful Life” has sometimes been called a modern variation on “A Christmas Carol,” and in many ways it is. But in one crucial way it is very different: it is about what might happen to a man whose heart has always been open. George Bailey, though he dreams of getting away from his hometown, reluctantly but genuinely serves others on a daily basis. He doesn’t just do the minimum, either; his entire life is a hard daily grind in the service of a organization that provides consistent good to a lot of his neighbors. His goodness is not average, and the movie quite consciously presents him as a better man than almost any you can expect to meet. To be sure, he’s not presented as perfect, and in particular there’s a low-key bitterness about him that he struggles to contain. His heart, like those of real people, is reluctant in relatable ways, and he has to work to keep it open. But it’s fundamentally open. He approximates, at least, the kind of open heart to which the Grinch/Scrooge stories call us.
But “It’s A Wonderful Life” is not about how a man is converted to good. It’s about the difficulties in staying open, and the very real possibility of closing again, especially when injured by the Potters and the Scrooges of the world who have never been visited by the spirits of Christmas. And it goes without saying, the movie presents yet another possibility, about being miraculously opened up even further, if such a heart is willing.
But beyond these important possibilities, there’s something else that most strikes me about the movie, when I compare it to Scrooge-type stories. “It’s A Wonderful Life” shows us how one man’s heart causes others to open or close along with him. Grinch and Scrooge stories mainly explore what happens to one heart, and whether it’s open or closed; meanwhile the hearts of everyone around this person go on essentially unchanged. That’s especially true in Whoville, where the residents go on caroling no matter what Grinch does. Scrooge does have an enormous material impact on those around him, but folks like Bob Cratchit and his family remain loving-hearted, no matter how materially poor or bereft Scrooge might make them.
“It’s A Wonderful Life” explores the web that connects us, by showing that without George Bailey’s open heart and material help, the residents of Bedford Falls would be materially poorer and emotionally closed. Without George, Mary Hatch has never married. Ma Bailey lives in fear. Ernie the cab driver loses his wife and kid because he can’t support them. Nick the bartender becomes a surly bully who believes in nothing. Bert becomes a trigger-happy policeman (and I hope that George Bailey’s guardian angel Clarence was doing something about those bullets).
Uncle Billy, we are told, goes insane. We are not told anything about whether his heart opened or closed in George’s absence. But if Uncle Billy has been committed to an insane asylum, then a sweet and good heart has essentially been locked up from the outside.
I don’t compare these stories to say which is “better.” But this Christmas, having watched all these movies again with my family, “It’s A Wonderful Life” is hitting me with just that: the tough-to-cut web into which our hearts are tied.
Wishing you and yours a fine and merry Christmas!