Strange, isn't it? Each man's life touches so many other lives. When he isn't around he leaves an awful hole, doesn't he?


I’ll be honest with you guys, I feel like I can be. This year has been hard. I accepted I was losing my battle with depression and opened up to my family and friends about the fight I have been having with myself for far too long now in solitude. I’ve lost loved ones in the past couple of years that I struggled to make peace with, and I’ve lost touch with many more people who are still here but have felt a million miles away for the longest time. I’ve struggled to concentrate on my studies, at times I’ve struggled to just get out of bed in the morning. I have a beautiful fiancée who loves me and I felt ashamed for feeling so alone, but on the nights we were apart I found myself lying awake in the early hours of the morning wondering what the world would be like without me. I wouldn’t even say I was suicidal, but I was at a point where I didn’t have the heart to feel like I was even living.

Over the course of the year, the more I have opened myself up to my emotions and spoken to those around me, the easier it has become to live with the shadows that fester in my subconscious and plague my sleep. I’m not yet happy I don’t think, but I am hopeful now. Cinema and my nosedive into my love for it since joining Letterboxd has given me so many resonant and immeasurably important experiences of recognition and understanding and empathy this year that I have never been so thankful for film, never more aware of its power to touch the soul and maybe in some ways change a life. From Singin’ In The Rain to A Monster Calls to Mission Impossible even, to Punch-Drunk Love to A Star Is Born to Thunder Road and so many more, fleeting glimpses into the universal and the inextinguishable truths of life and love and sheer humanity have been given to me and I do truly feel changed for having experienced them.

What more could we ask from a work of art than for it to in some small way change the way we see the world, non-hyperbolically maybe even change our lives? Well, after watching It’s A Wonderful Life today as another year hurtles towards its close and another full of challenges and chances awaits, as I reflect on my year and my fears and hopes for the future... I think it has done one better than changing a life. I think that maybe not right now, or maybe a little bit now, but certainly in years to come, it will be my Clarence... it will be a film that I look at as a hand to hold onto when life seems to be slipping away from me. I know it sounds melodramatic but I feel like this film could save my life, even though I hope I never fall so low that death feels like the only way out.

The film is a masterpiece of technical craftsmanship and performative excellence, with Jimmy Stewart’s George Bailey possibly cinema’s most empathetic and human protagonist, and Donna Reed as his opposite in Mary the most dreamy and beautifully caring romantic lead to live for and love deeply. The narrative is so well known and so often discussed that I almost have no interest in regurgitating it here, though suffice it to say that the trials and tribulations of Bailey’s life in direct contrast to the monolithic joy and compassion that he has for his fellow man and his family and that they have for him is overwhelming to behold. When George looks over the bridge and the waves look to be begging him to jump, the weight of the love and care of his friends and family and us as an audience manifests itself in Clarence to let him know... to let any George Bailey of this world know... that there is always another way to go. The world is made infinitely poorer for the absence of a life not yet lived and loved out, and though times may get hard and things may feel insurmountable, to throw it away would be to do so much more than just end one life - it could irreparably damage and destroy so many more. Of course, George isn’t to blame for his predicament, and great care is taken to sympathise with him and to demonstrate his position as a victim of circumstance and not an architect of his own failures and misfortunes. But still, Capra shows us the much darker place the world be without George Bailey, and his importance and tragic oversight of his own value to the world is emphasised perfectly in doing so. That’s really important to me, like a hug when you feel like you aren’t even worth somebody’s eye contact when you speak. To know the world would change without me, whether I feel it or not, means a lot - not in a narcissistic way, but in a way that lets me know that even if I can’t see it, I have a place here and I deserve to keep it.

The film balances solas and sentence sublimely, a fable for all of time and all of us who are touched by it, and though the bleaker moments weigh heavily upon the narrative, the climactic euphoria and ecstasy when it does arrive is quite unlike anything else I have ever witnessed. As the film started I was in one of my states of disaffection to the world around me, but by the time the credits rolled I felt overwhelmed with a need to share my love and appreciation for my friends and family and for the gift of the life I have.

It is an imperfect life we lead, a messy life, a troubled life, a testing life, a hard life, a beautiful life, a joyous life, a heartbreaking and heartwarming and heartaching and heartmaking and caustic but utterly chaotically miraculous life. But Frank Capra’s contribution to the world, one of the greatest Christmas gifts of all time, is a reassurance that for all of its highs and lows, it truly and profoundly and undeniably is a wonderful life. I wish all of you guys a Merry Christmas, and may each and every one of you find your Mary, lasso that moon for him/her, and find the magic that resides deep in your bones and will never leave you even when you feel your mind flying apart. I don’t know any of you personally, but I mean this sincerely - I love you all, and I wish the best for you all.

Thank you for being a part of this crazy ol’ adventure with me

Jordan 

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