I Love the Film But I Have To Do This...

Rating: 9/10 (10 March 2017)

This is a very good movie. I'm sure there are people who would rank It's a Wonderful Life at the top of their favorites list. The first time I saw the movie, on TV about 40 years ago, I loved it. I saw it once or twice more through the years and then sat down and watched it beginning to end last Christmas season and I was bothered by something. I'll try to explain but I give fair warning: you probably won't like what I say.
George Bailey runs a savings and loan. Some money has come up missing and George cannot find it. He is at wit's end and doesn't know where to turn. He contemplates suicide because he was casually informed "George, you're worth more dead than alive." A frazzled George Bailey jumps off a bridge, into icy water but does not perish because he has been saved by Clarence, a guardian angel. Clarence decides to show George how valuable his life is by allowing George to view what his world would be like without him.
George learns that certain people would have died had he not been there to save them. He finds his wife is a lonely librarian and spinster. He begins to see how his life was actually wonderful despite the problems.
Here is another very plausible version of what George Bailey would see had he never been born. First, his wife almost assuredly would have found someone else, had kids and lived happily. She was a vivacious, popular woman and there is no reason to think her life would have been miserable had there never been a George Bailey. Can you see that in the movie? In the film, George Bailey saved his younger brother's life, a brother who in the movie, went on to save the lives of a hundred men in WWII. As said in the movie, George really saved those men too. Well, how about if two of those men became mass murderers? Or maybe they committed war crimes against innocent citizens. George would be responsible for them too, right? Clarence would not have mentioned those things. They would not have been in the script. But those types of tragedies would be there too in one form or another.
The reality is: Clarence showed George Bailey only the positive results of his being born, not the negative. And there would have been negatives. All of our lives have both the positives, and the negatives. Hey, I'm sorry I gave the plot as much thought as I did. And I'm sorry I felt compelled to write this review. Give me credit, I did checkmark the little box warning that the review was a spoiler. I wasn't kidding, was I?