The Roquefort Files

I had a good Christmas, I really did. Ash & I found a great new flat in “Hillside”* a few days before Christmas, paranoically calling the letting agent almost as soon as we’d left. We spent the evening before Christmas with the heating at full bore, playing with our respective new toys, then drove over to Fife for a family dinner on Christmas Day and a party at Jeff’s mum’s on Boxing Day. All in all, a cosily run-of-the-mill but thoroughly enjoyable few days.

Before all this, though, we were in town on the day of Christmas Eve to see It’s a Wonderful Life at the Glasgow Film Theatre. This is a tradition at the GFT; they show the film every Christmas and apparently some families go to see it year after year.

We wedged ourselves into the period accurate chairs (the cinema is very 1930s, and so is its maximum customer girth) and settled in.

As the film rolled on, I was somewhat confused. Wasn’t this supposed to be a happy film? About, for example, the wondrousness of life? Because as far as I could tell, it really wasn’t. George Bailey is trapped in Bedford Falls by cruel circumstance and the outright selfishness of others for nigh on forty years. After a lifetime of disappointment and crushed dreams, the coup de grâce is delivered when his alcoholic uncle inadvertently drops their last $8000 into the lap of the banker Mr Potter, the Baileys’ lifelong nemesis. George finally acknowledges the enormity of the situation and he suffers an entirely appropriate nervous breadown. The town bails him out, deciding belatedly to thank him for 38 years of suffering and an attempted suicide on their behalf. Oh, thanks guys. Really.

What made it doubly weird was the pacing: with the audience of 1947 boasting a collective attention span orders of magnitude longer than Kids Today™, the film plods easily along, dwelling on each new disaster that detains in town the only man who actually wants to leave.

I mean, did I miss anything?

The final denouement is moving, granted, but then what wouldn’t be after two hours of relentless despair and small-town claustrophobia? Despite all this, there was a hearty round of applause when the credits rolled, with people calling out “See you next year!” to each other as they filed out, and I left the cinema with a spring in my step. I couldn’t help wondering if this could be the start of a tradition for Ash & I; at the very least, a year should be long enough to erase the worst of George’s meticulously chronicled downfall from my memory :)

Have a good Hogmanay!

** Honestly, take a read of this guff. I smell desperation in the air.