At our frequent worst, gratitude isnвЂ™t something we feel so much as calculate, tallying our advantages to weigh against the miseries of others. These scenes are animated by a gentle sadism, and a belief that perverse tours of the imagination can soothe the spirit. So, too, does he need to make a soul-journey into the nightmare world where friends and family have been plunged into unwitting, perpetual mourning. George, despite his Eagle Scout earnestness, still needs divine intervention to appreciate his life. The film, perhaps, is more about thanklessness than gratitude. In CapraвЂ™s vision, even life in heaven is a poisoned by ambition, while life on Earth is harried by greed and corruption. For all their unvarnished sentiment, his movies paint the world over with cynicism. ItвЂ™s the suggestion that life is a duty rather than a joy, wearily performed for the benefit of others. What restores GeorgeвЂ™s optimism in this scene isnвЂ™t a sudden recollection of lifeвЂ™s pleasures, but the fear of how much worse it could be. And while IвЂ™m unfailingly delighted by his screaming, вЂњMerry Christmas, you wonderful Building and Loan,вЂќ the scene often strikes me as a moralizing Goodnight Moon, with George naming all the institutions that have tethered him to his mediocrity and misery. His other most famous films also sing the virtues of little lives in little places-think of Jimmy StewartвЂ™s first tortured turn as the title character and political neophyte in Mr. The sentimentality here is shameless and characteristic Capra. At best, he might go to prison, after a bungling relative implicates him in a financial scandal. He never goes to college, or to Europe, and a childhood accident prevents him even from going to war. He has a carload of children, perhaps out of necessity. Out of intense sexual frustration, he marries a college freshman played by Donna Reed. Out of loyalty to his father, he takes over the family business, the Bailey Building and Loan. He grows up and dreams of going to college, or to Europe, or anywhere at all. Kids scream at him: go to work, slave! Adults slap him until his ears bleed. GeorgeвЂ™s childhood, like his adulthood, is blighted by humiliation. A family film about suicidal ideation, it follows a loan officer named George Bailey, played with easy charm and toxic bile by Stewart. Perhaps this fixation is depressing, but ItвЂ™s a Wonderful Life is often a depressing movie. Practically speaking, this means he has to work on Christmas. He has a single shirt to his name-the same one he died in-and a single ambition: to gain a rank and his proverbial wings.

His clothes look thrifty, even threadbare. He strikes us as perhaps a little homely for Heaven, with his gentle Muppet face and billowy eyebrows. When first we see him, heвЂ™s been dispatched by God to squire Jimmy Stewart through visions of a yuletide netherworld. But now that IвЂ™m an adult-now that IвЂ™ve seen Frank CapraвЂ™s 1946 film ItвЂ™s A Wonderful LifeВ countless times -I can only imagine Heaven as a thankless military bureaucracy.Д¬onsider Clarence, the AS-2, or вЂњangel, second-classвЂќ played by the character actor Henry Travers. As a bigger kid, I imagined it as an infinity pool that no one ever peed in. Cheese, though ruled by neither God nor animatronic rodents. As a kid, I pictured it as a giant ball pit, like the ones you see at Chuck E. Like many people without a particular religious creed, IвЂ™ve imagined Heaven in a variety of ways over my lifetime.

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