Monday, December 27, 2010

The best Christmas movie ever « Mercury Rising 鳯女

The best Christmas movie ever

Posted by Charles II on December 25, 2010

Watching the classic Christmas movies makes it clear how much of what we understood America to be is simply gone. Oh, the segregated America of the movies still exists in much of suburbia and rural America. Even in the big cities, the melting pot is still very lumpy.

But despite the deep flaws of that America, many of the movies of the 1930s and 1940s showed three things that have been erased from our consciousness of America: the corrosive nature of highly concentrated wealth, the need for and redemptive power of progressive change, and the sense that we are all in this thing called America together. Nowhere is that clearer than in the movie Boys Town.

The basic story of Boys Town is very simple. A priest, Father Edward Flanagan, is confronted with the destructiveness of children who have been abandoned by or are currently being abused by their parents. Many, like the fellow in the opening scene of the movie, turn into violent criminals. Trusting in the power of God (and gently bullying a local small businessman into making donations), Flanagan scrapes together the money first to rent a house, then to buy a farm, which becomes Boys Town. His greatest opponent in the community is a newspaper publisher who, supported by “the good Christian women” (I think this is how it is said, but am not positive), thinks delinquents need to go to prison.

Flanagan’s credo is that “there is no bad boy.” One of the boys Flanagan accepts is the younger brother of a career criminal, Joe Marsh. Joe, although boastful of his own exploits, has some residual streak of decency which causes him to ask Flanagan to care for his sibling, Whitey, on the grounds that Whitey doesn’t have what it takes to succeed at crime. Whitey will test Flanagan’s faith that there is good in all children.

Boys Town is a pure democracy, where the boys set the rules. After picking a fight with and being licked in a fair fight by the present mayor, Freddie, Whitey does everything he can to corrupt the system, offering favors and offices to others. The election features Whitey, Freddie, and a crippled child who (since I’m not positive of his name) I’ll call Paul. Paul wants to run for mayor, and Flanagan encourages him, mentioning obliquely FDR as a role model. For his campaign Whitey simply stages a triumphalist spectacle worthy of a George Bush. Freddie rails against corruption. But Paul says that because Whitey cannot be allowed to win, he will withdraw so that Freddie can defeat Whitey. Instead, the boys recognize that only Paul unselfishly cares about the general welfare, so they elect him.

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Whitey tries to leave the school, but the school “mascot,” a little boy named Pee Wee who has been Whitey’s only real friend tries to tag along. Pee Wee is struck by a car and seriously injured. Whitey is devastated. He tries to join the other boys in a prayer for Pee Wee but can’t handle it. He drifts away and into town. There, he is present at the scene of a bank robbery, being committed by his older brother Joe. Joe is startled and shoots Whitey in the leg. Joe helps him to a church, swears Whitey to secrecy, and anonymously calls Father Flanagan.

But the bank’s watchman has been murdered, and Whitey is a suspect. The newspaper publisher starts a campaign demanding that Boys Town be closed down. Whitey, determined that he will not be the means by which the place he has grown to love is shuttered, goes to where the robbers are hiding and tells his brother that he will not honor the pledge of secrecy. The robbers take him captive. Meanwhile, other boys have trailed Whitey, and they get all the other boys in the school to confront the robbers. Father Flanagan, arriving late at the scene, finds the boys so determined that he cannot turn them away. Instead, he leads the righteous mob.

Facing down the guns of the robbers, the boys seize them. Whitey’s role is clarified and he is redeemed.

As a bonus, Boys Town has a classic Steve Gilliard line, where Whitey says that he likes the Yankees, and another boy says, “You would!” (a detail that I mischievously include to see if PW will read below the fold). Plus, Father Flanagan is played by Spencer Tracy.

This movie makes some extraordinary claims

– It asserts that human beings are inherently good
– It defines the fundamental causes of juvenile crime as abusive or neglectful parents
– It claims that there are constructive solutions to juvenile crime rooted in love, rather than punishment
– It shows pure democracy as the means to purge corruption from governance
– It shows the biggest opponents of reform as the yellow press and “the good Christian women”
– It recognize FDR both as a visionary, and as a man of great personal courage who overcame disability

Any genuine Christian will recognize these themes as fundamentally about the transformational power of love. It is love that takes us as we are and, rather than punishing us to make us conform, restores our inner peace that allows us to conform.

It is love that sees us as equals, and it is therefore love that demands democracy. It is love that recognizes the destructive power of self-righteousness and how that, in turn, leads to the slanderous, sensation-seeking press. Consider the pursuit of Bill Clinton over Monica Lewinsky: had every person who had shared his sin declined to participate, the Congress could not have mustered a quorum to impeach him, the newspapers could not have sold enough copy to run their presses and the cable stations would have had no advertisers.

Christmas is mentioned only once in Boys Town, and then just as a moment for a quiet miracle of the heart, as a local businessman is moved to bring the hungry boys a Christmas dinner. But the movie is infused with the miracle of love. It is the miracle of love, and not the story of the carpenter’s son per se that is Jesus. When people forgive, when they treat one another as equals, when they set aside their self-righteousness and accept their own imperfection, then Jesus walks among us.

And so, Boys Town, which is not about Christmas, is one of the best Christmas movies. It doesn’t involve angels and extravagant miracles. In it, there are no magic answers, no credo to boast about, no vengeful God striking down the wicked. Instead, it shows God present in the smallest acts of kindness. It shows the miracle of love transforming those who are willing to let it do so. It shows that wrong is brought down not by individual heroes, but by ordinary people who have been granted the power to run their own lives. It claims, along with Paul, that in being granted perfect freedom, we become genuinely good.

This movie could never, ever be made today. Even if it were, it would in this bizarre age be damned as “socialist.” Instead, it is this age that is damned, damned by its own unwillingness to accept love as the only legitimate power on earth.

PS: Read this from Brother John.

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