A defining moment for George comes at childhood, when he saves his brother Harry ( Georgie Nokes as a child Todd Karns grown up) from drowning in an ice-covered pond. And, he is constantly sacrificing this dream - nay, the basic tenets of his humanity - to ensure the people around him can fulfill theirs instead. He wants, more than anything, to leave his hometown of Bedford Falls, New York for a life of travel, of ambition, of newness. It’s a Wonderful Life does make good on arguing the premise of its title, but it shows us how much courage, grit, and heart is necessary to come to that conclusion.įrom the very beginning, we know two true things about Stewart’s character of George Bailey, first seen as a child played by Bobby Anderson. For the majority of the film - I’d say a good 3/4ths of its running time, if not a little longer - we watch Capra render his work in unsparing, naturalistic, shadowy-photographed scenes of domestic self-destruction, and we watch Stewart plead, work, and bluster his way through all of his conflicting impulses and responsibilities until he can no longer carry them without breaking. Stewart is an everyman actor known for basic tenets of goodness and decency Capra is a director known for wide-eyed optimism and deification of “good old American values,” often seen in a semi-denigrating fashion both of these broad generalizations do make themselves present in Wonderful Life, but they take their sweet time to get there. If you’ve not seen It’s a Wonderful Life, or if it’s been a few Christmases past since you’ve revisited, I am here to remind you of the film’s massive, non-stop, full-sprint submergence into darkness. Nice and lovely, right? Well, to get there, we have to wade through the unrelentingly destructive forces of capitalism, the constant dashing of dreams, the looming doom of being stuck, the reminder that all people around you get to succeed while you do not, the slide into borderline abusive behaviors of desperation and anger, and eventually, the consideration of suicide. What keeps the beloved Frank Capra/ Jimmy Stewart feature on the hearts and minds of so many? Probably its magical realist conceit, able to strike directly into the purpose of human existence and remind everyone that they’re special for who they are. India has always existed for humanity and not for herself and it is for humanity and not for herself that she must be great.It’s a Wonderful Life is an ubiquitous Christmas classic, a timeless piece of heartwarming, holiday-centered filmmaking that’s beloved by families to this day since its original 1946 release. She is rising to shed the eternal light entrusted to her over the world. She does not rise as other countries do, for self or when she is strong, to trample on the weak. It is to give this religion that India is rising. This is the Dharma that for the salvation of humanity was cherished in the seclusion of this peninsula from of old. Other religions are preponderatingly religions of faith and profession, but the Sanatan Dharma is life itself it is a thing that has not so much to be believed as lived. We speak often of the Hindu religion, of the Sanatan Dharma, but few of us really know what that religion is. I realised what the Hindu religion meant. I was not only to understand intellectually but to realise what Sri Krishna demanded of Arjuna and what He demands of those who aspire to do His work, to be free from repulsion and desire, to do work for Him without the demand for fruit, to renounce self-will and become a passive and faithful instrument in His hands, to have an equal heart for high and low, friend and opponent, success and failure, yet not to do His work negligently. His strength entered into me and I was able to do the sadhana of the Gita. I have had another thing for you to do and it is for that I have brought you here, to teach you what you could not learn for yourself and to train you for my work." Then He placed the Gita in my hands. It seemed to me that He spoke to me again and said, "The bonds you had not the strength to break, I have broken for you, because it is not my will nor was it ever my intention that that should continue. My work was very dear to me and in the pride of my heart I thought that unless I was there, it would suffer or even fail and cease therefore I would not leave it. I was weak and could not accept the call. I remembered then that a month or more before my arrest, a call had come to me to put aside all activity, to go in seclusion and to look into myself, so that I might enter into closer communion with Him. In this seclusion the earliest realisation, the first lesson came to me. I waited day and night for the voice of God within me, to know what He had to say to me, to learn what I had to do.
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