The Prevailing Lessons of ‘It’s a Wonderful Life’
One lesson my teacher imparted that will stick with me forever
In fourth grade, my teacher thought that it was critical that we see the movie It’s a Wonderful Life to usher in the holidays. It was his first year ever educating, and he approached the job with the verve of a teacher achieving a lifelong dream.
Sometimes that enthusiasm manifested by bringing his guitar into class in a mid-2000s feat of School of Rock-styled glory. Instead of shoving hard rock down the throats of fourth graders, though, he diligently decided instead that what we needed to soothe our angsty young souls was a little Bob Dylan. (I’ll always be thankful that we lived in a democratic enough district that no parent objected to these long-winded musical meanderings.)
On other occasions, his excitement for the job could be seen in the fervent insistence that we learn important life lessons — that we see the movies that matter. But perhaps nowhere could his lovable stringency be more plainly felt than in his die-hard belief that we each see and understand Frank Capra’s It’s a Wonderful Life.
Toward the end of December and leading into winter break, each afternoon our holiday-eager class full of students would queue our desks into rows and dim the lights.
On that first afternoon, though, we watched with rapt attention as snow flurried from the sky and Mr. Cohen loudly wheeled in a CRT TV from down the hall. Squeaking its way up the sloped corridor and into the room, he wheeled the boxy old contraption inches beyond the doorway with a labored grunt and clumsily closed the door behind him with his creased leather shoe.
He carted the TV to the center of the room with brute force, beads of sweat, and a crescendoing series of discordant creaks reverberating off of windows and walls. Three wheels cooperated in the endeavor, but one appeared to have a mind of its own, completing a series of erratic revolutions in bold defiance of his circular companions and the giant puppetmaster wheeling them along.
As the screech reached a close, Mr. Cohen quietly reached the conclusion that the cart might be best stored conveniently in the classroom closet for however many days it would take to get these jumpy kids to finish a bygone movie.
The sound was drawn out to painstaking lengths, but it was a portentous sort of cacophony. The high-pitch shrill that — in times past signaled day-long stints with substitute teachers, or mornings strapped into The Magic School Bus marathons — on this fateful day foreshadowed something very different. As the movie began, we were greeted, not to an anticipated whir of colors, but… a monotonous array of blacks, whites, and grays. Mr. Cohen did his damnedest to shield himself from a battery of sighs, objections, and verbal tomatoes hurled his way.
“This movie’s black and white!” a classmate in a graphic tee pointed out as though the peace-loving teacher in slacks had just committed the most heinous of sins.
“Is the whole movie like this??” asked another, sure that no entire film could go on so laboriously devoid of color.
“Heretic!” a third voice shouted as a crafty trio of miscreants in a corner began extemporizing a scarlet letter to staple onto the harmless, middle-aged man in a suit.
Mr. Cohen decided this was a movie best split into chunks. To impose too much black-and-white in one sitting would be borderline soporific for the ADD-addled classroom of SpongeBob SquarePants-connoiseurs. He took to hosting discussions in between sittings to make sure the theatrics of this older style didn’t soar too far above our heads. He was desperate to see this movie stick its dive into the fidgeting sea of distractable minds before him.
So the afternoons were interspersed with pauses as the kindly instructor discovered more and more within the movie that demanded proper parental guidance. Social conventions throughout society had changed drastically by the time the class full of juveniles sat down to watch the dated old nickelodeon. But they hadn’t shifted quite so far that a little gender inequality elicited full-blown cancel calls for the untenured teacher. Nonetheless, he was conscientious enough to send students home with a permission slip before we each took part in this heavier viewing experience.
As we made our way further into the monochromatic movie and our apertures for its dulled palettes began to adjust, yawns turned into intrigue. By the time the plot really began reaching its climax and the protagonist, George Bailey, was granted a glimpse into a world without him, a class full of students was suddenly having their first love affair with an all black-and-white movie.
Had we seen the movie in 2nd grade, the subject matter might have been above us, and had we seen it in 6th, we would have spent 2 years without one of the most utterly impactful messages a PG movie has to impart — that no matter what you do, or how awful things seem, or what dead end it appears you’ve reached, there are people in the world who love you.
Suicide is a taboo subject to address for what’s largely lauded as one of the great family-friendly movies of all time. But at the same time, it’s one of the very most important subjects to explore. If there wasn’t another lesson we learned in that classroom, getting us to understand the dire importance of life at that early age marked a job completed with flying colors. When I look back over all of the things I’ve learned in school that have simply evaporated, I’ve grown a deeper and deeper appreciation for the teachers whose lessons were of the more life-oriented variety. I’ll always admire Mr. Cohen for his divergent approach to the job.
And though parts of the message about suicide in the film didn’t mean for me then what they do today, I went home happily changed all the same. And now as an adult, with friends who’ve gone down that terrible road, the message of the movie is one that means more to me than it ever used to.
It’s a Wonderful Life was likely the first movie to so effectively communicate the idea that life is worth living. It’s a powerful portrayal of the fact that there are always friends in your corner who care about you — that each of us leaves an impact on the world. It’s a true exhibit of the communities full of people who would come together and rally in your favor if they knew the stakes. It’s a reminder of all those who would miss you terribly if you were gone.
Ideas like that aren’t easy to impart to children in all of their gravity. But life has a way of making biting realities out of what sound only like the hokey truisms of the wise. To understand that everyone is loved is one thing, but to visibly see the loved ones gathered around in agony when people are gone forever is another.
And in that house full of people who love the fictional George Bailey, I see the masses of people hurt by suicide and the people who would have been there for all the departed if only they’d known to be. I see cinema’s most powerful embodiment of that aching truth of what suicide leaves in its wake. I see in plain letters that it’s a tragically permanent solution to a temporary problem.
Thank you. What a wonderful teacher! I love the movie and watch it every year. It was one of my mom’s favorites too, so it is bittersweet. I have been going through a rough patch and had a few George Bailey moments myself. No thoughts of suicide, but wondering about the world if I had never been born. I love the movie for so many reasons, but one of my favorite moments is when George finds Harry’s grave and Clarence reminds him that he really did have a wonderful life. We all need that reminder at times.
I love this movie with its many life lessons. I feel like there were many movies and books back in my childhood that prepared me to grow up to both, be a good person and perceive the meaning behind things that happened to me in real life. One other perspective on this movie, that I hope every child sees, is that these are the lessons that aren’t taught enough now days in school, the home or society. And societies moral underpinnings have come loose as a consequence. We don’t have to look any further than Trump and the MAGA’s to know that this is true.