http://www.libertyfilmfestival.com/libertas/?p=7898
'You can watch the film and marvel in its perfect script, unrivaled series of iconic scenes, and the towering performance given by Jimmy Stewart… And you can watch that final scene with the living room full of family and loved ones and realize, like George Bailey does, that it’s all up to us. That our fate and happiness and chance at a wonderful life are almost always completely within our own control. Goals are good, but ambition can poison. Wanting what we don’t have and comparing ourselves to others is a punishing way to live a life. But anyone can fill a living room with people who love them, you just have to accept that love.
George Bailey’s dark and desperate path to that moment is there to remind us that our blessings are not found in the world or given to us by others, but rather in who we are and what we’re capable of as human beings. Everything that matters or is beautiful in life costs nothing more than what we’re born with: our ability to be decent and gracious and kind. This is a bleak examination of the terrible thing in the human condition which makes us look over what we have to what we can’t have. It’s a perspective antidote that ends, as many films do, with an amazing triumph, but a triumph available to anyone for the asking.'
What if I'd never lived? What have I contributed? Would anybody notice if I was dead? As this movie shows, there are very good reasons to be optimistic about the answers to those questions.
And to all a Good Year!
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