Back in the good old days when Americans valued personal integrity and social responsibility...
In this world, no one is not good at compromise. The desire to fly high and the heavy fetters of reality collided and collided, creating a feeling of helplessness. Since childhood, he was afraid of reconciling with the curse of "life is not as you wish", but he learned to remain calm amid the indifference of ups and downs. On the one hand, suppressing the germination of hope, on the other hand, secretly preparing for the attitude of resignation, walking forward tremblingly, walking on thin ice. The most terrifying dream I have ever had is the sudden death of a loved one, the life track that I have known for more than ten years collapsed in a moment, and the joy of the future dream in my imagination came to an abrupt end. Waking up in the middle of the night, panting and looking around in the darkness, at a loss. So I convince myself that I need to indulge in the present moment and be obsessed with trivial things so that I can sleep peacefully. Half-dream and half-awake, I feel that the world is impermanent, and I just want to be free and self-sufficient.
George Bailey lives in this nightmare. His father passed away suddenly, completely disrupting his life plan. The first is to miss the round-the-world trip, then the missed college, the missed honeymoon, the missed Christmas Eve with the children. He fell into confusion several times, and had several opportunities to get out of this confusion. It's true that he doesn't think he's living the life he wants to, and he constantly underestimates the value of what he's doing. But George Bailey stubbornly chose this confusion, he chose to keep his father's teachings and the dignity of living in the town, and he chose to sacrifice for the morality he held in his heart. This morality is the way of the sage who said in the Tao Te Ching that "the way of heaven, when there is excess, it makes up for what is lacking. The way of man, when what is damaged is more than enough. Whoever has more than enough to serve the world is the way of the sage." He didn't know the meaning behind the morality he adhered to, but he became more persistent and tenacious after each test.
I think when society stops being hedonistic devotees, there will be characters like George Bailey on the screen. Human beings, because of their adherence to moral beliefs in their hearts, adopt a revolt against pleasure, which is the part of human nature that they are most proud of. The actor James Stewart is known as "American Conscience", which represents the values generally recognized by American society in the last century, which have disappeared in today's mainstream information media, and some are even criticized as dross. There is no shortage of depictions of the social characteristics of the United States before and after World War II in the film - close neighbor relationship, Christianity as a national belief, family responsibilities with a clear division of labor, the gradual popularization of higher education, and so on. From this point of view, this film also conforms to the characteristics of the main theme film of "promoting mainstream ideology through realism".
About Mary, I want to talk about it separately, she is a comrade-in-arms of George Bailey who faces the same enemies in life. Her loyalty, tolerance, and wisdom reflect the traditional world's portrayal of the perfect female image. As a mother and wife, she is a supporter of her husband's cause, an educator for future generations, and a builder of family harbours. Society's expectations of women's responsibilities were projected onto the role of Mary, reflecting the ideals of love and marriage in people's minds at the time. When her honeymoon was forced to cancel, she had no regrets; when faced with a partner who was irritable and irritable when she was on the verge of collapse, she responded with love and understanding, and used actions to comfort him in pain. Mary's charisma in the film, showing off her wit, her husband and her son, coincides with many traditional Chinese "feminine virtues".
In the film, the status of friendship is emphasized in the message the angel wrote to George Bailey: "Remember, if you have friends, you will not fail." When his career collapsed, George Bailey had no choice but to compromise, and wanted to sacrifice his dignity for the continuation of the company. The merry Christmas atmosphere around him dragged it into deeper despair. Desperately muttering: "If only I had never been born". The angel's fulfillment of this hope finally makes the protagonist realize "each man's life touches so many other lives". Friendship makes Bailey reassess the value of his life and inspire confidence in life. A trickle of help from the townspeople converged into a river, leading Bailey out of the trough. Friendship is also the only virtue explicitly affirmed in the film.
Emotions in the movie set off waves with the ups and downs of the protagonist's fate, and I haven't been so close to the characters in the movie for a long time. Like an anxiety suppressant, this movie first shows you all kinds of unhappiness in life, and at the end it whispers, "It doesn't matter. Look, there are family and friendship, how beautiful life is." .
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