"This movie changed my life."

A statement of grand hyperbole if there ever was one.

How can a piece of cinema tangibly influence someone enough that they can objectively say that their living, breathing life had been altered in some way? Is there a measure of whether or not that can happen? Does the change have to be great, or can you count the adjustments to day-in-day-out minutiae?

It is a statement that I make anytime this wonderful film happens to grace a conversation: an affirmation that I completely believe in.

Growing up, I was always looking for a person to show me that anything that I did actually mattered. I never really bought in to religion or the post-death rewards that could be reaped if I did things a certain way or held certain things in a high regard. My parents, though for the most part good, never approached moral and ethical lessons in a humanistic way that stuck with me. My teachers were underpaid and overextended. All of the neon-lit standards for who was supposed to show you what it meant to live a good life weren't what I wanted or needed.

Because of this, I dove into movies and books. I hoped that, in allowing myself to be Indiana Jones or Luke Skywalker for 120 minutes, I would absorb some sort of epiphanic life affirmation by proxy. I threw myself into the pages of Stephen King. I grew to the point where I felt more at home in Middle Earth than I did in Wisconsin. And the lessons that I learned from the paper and the screen didn't make me a bad person, they just caused me to lose touch with reality and what it meant to be human. Because that is what most good art does: it allows you to forget the trials of flesh and blood and dirt and plastic for a time and to live in a world built by someone else, just for you. And as life in the real world got worse, I retired further into the unreal.

Then, one of my best friends pushed me to watch It's a Wonderful Life. I was unimpressed by the description and put off by its release date, idiotically forging a link between the age of something and its relevance to me in a modern world. How could a cornball Christmas movie that came out the same year as the microwave oven hold my interest in the slightest? I put it off. I saw the VHS tape in the library and scoffed at black and white cover art. I skimmed the blurb on the back, chuckling at the pithy proverbs that preceded the synopsis. And finally, after he broke me down just enough, I relented and watched.

I have no doubt in my mind that—since that day—I have been a better human being. I found my person in George Bailey. Because although most good art makes you forget about the real world, the best art makes you remember that the real world still exists. For the first time in my life, I felt like I had someone, something to strive for. I love this film with all of my heart.

This movie changed my life.