Delayed Perspective – It’s a Wonderful Life

To those of you familiar with my Delayed Perspective posts you will know they are an eclectic mix of film, TV, book, music and podcast reviews. The main purpose of the Delayed Perspective banner is to look at things that have been around for a while and may have been overlooked, forgotten about or underappreciated. Or they may have been out for a while and it has taken me several years to catch on (yes I’m looking at you Battlestar Galactica, will you ever let it go!?)

This edition of DP was going to review the movie “It’s a Wonderful Life” but I came up with two reasons why I can’t possibly do that. Those reasons are as follows;

1) To me this movie is like a family member or the love of my life. And what I mean by this is that I hold this film so close to my heart that I am incapable of being objective. I can’t do it, I have tried but it’s no good it cannot be done.

2) This film is so perfect that no words that I write will ever do it justice. Many words have been written by many film critics down the years claiming it to be the greatest film of all time, and they may well be right. I just don’t think I can add to the chorus of praise. What I can observe is that a lot of people who I have spoken to about this film, come up with the following response;

“Oh sure I’ve seen it, I think I remember it being on TV at Christmas when I was a kid”

This film is so embedded in our psyche that I think sometimes we forget how utterly brilliant it is. So before I ramble any further and this turns into the review I told you I wasn’t going to write, let me share with you a clip from the film;

I am unashamed to admit that the ending still brings a tear to my eye. Every year my wife and I will watch it on New Year’s Eve, because it has become our tradition and because we like to see the new year in by remembering all that is positive about the human spirit.