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THOUGH Capra still regarded the ending of Meet John Doe as a letdown, he did view it as ‘the best of a sorry lot.’ (The Name Above the Title, p. 304.) I am inclined to rate the ending more highly than the director, though I know neither the alternative endings nor Capra’s larger intentions. The reason I like it so much is that in it John Willoughby returns to the place whence he came, albeit transformed for the better. No longer is he the fraudulent hero with the world on his shoulders. Instead he is the simple man, known by loving friends as Long John Willoughby, a flawed but earnest man with good intentions. While he has lost the fame and influence that comes with being the leader of a movement, he has gained the genuine friendship of people who know and care for him. What greater joy can a man ask for, wrote Schiller in his aforementioned paean to brotherly love over a hundred fifty years earlier. ‘Yes, even if he can call only one person his friend in the whole world!’
In the end, the film is a celebration of friendship and its, as it were, gratuitous nature. A true friend, Aristotle once wrote, cares more about loving than being loved. He does not make his kindness contingent on the service of his friend. Such would be the friendship of a mere animal, who apportions affection according to the way others satisfy his needs. Norton knows friendships only of this sort, for instance his erstwhile friendships with Ann and John and all the other clients who depend upon his patronage. Even now Norton is pleading with John not to jump, simply because it would damage his interests. Contrast that with the friendship shown to John by the members of the John Doe Club who drive to City Hall to save him. They do so on a mere hunch that he will be there and with forgiveness in their hearts. It is fitting that the instigator of this mission, ‘old Sourpuss’, was himself the recipient of a gratuitous act of kindness inspired by John’s moving radio address.
For the first time in the movie, we see John the recipient of a sincere act of friendship. The people who go to rescue him – Ann, Connell, the Colonel, and the members of the John Doe Club – are only concerned with his well-being. It is of no importance to them that he has ceased to be the head of the John Doe movement or even that the movement, with all its positive effects, has ended. What matters to them is that John should be safe and know that his life has meaning. In Norton’s eyes, John’s life is worth saving only because of the inconvenience his suicide would cause him. To his friends, his life has inherent value that supersedes his role as the face of the John Doe movement. For the first time in the movie, he knows this. A weight is lifted off his shoulders. Not only does he no longer need to pretend to be someone he is not but he can enjoy the sincere love of others – and especially the love of Ann – for who he is as a person, with all his virtues and flaws.
As John walks past Norton with Ann in his arms, it is easy to forget that Norton, the villain of the movie, has achieved his desired result. John has not jumped to his death thereby revealing his sinister manipulation of the John Doe Clubs. Presumably Norton is no worse off than before: people will continue to believe that John Doe was a fraud and that Norton was taken advantage of. Sure, the members of one John Doe Club may be undeceived, but to thousands of other people, John’s not jumping will merely be confirmation that he was a liar.
Yet Norton is clearly not the victor at the end of the movie. Even if he comes away superior to John and his friends in power, money, and fame, he is inferior in a much more important respect: friendship. This was the very thing that the John Doe Clubs tried to promote as an answer to all political problems. If all people endeavoured to show every day of the year the same spirit of friendship they show at Christmas – which at its heart is the gratuitous love of one’s neighbour – there would be no need for political solutions, whether proposed by Norton’s party or the party of his rivals. Norton tried to harness this power but he was bound to fail. The whole point of the John Doe movement was that the animating love of friendship is its own reward, even if undeniably good things flow from it. As soon as you subordinate that love to those other good things, be they wealth, political solidarity, or even physical health, that love is destroyed.
Even John failed to understand the nature of true friendship. While he was right to defend the apolitical constitution of the John Doe Clubs, he was wrong to think that his sacrifice was enough to sustain it. While he may have claimed to be an average man, he was clearly more than that in the eyes of the people who looked up to him. Otherwise Norton and Ann would have had no need of him from the start. It was only a matter of time before he was unable to play that role any more, even if his deception had never been found out. The friendship promoted by the John Doe Club – the kind that leads to ‘the most just justice’ in the words of Aristotle (Nicomachean Ethics, 1155a.) – requires honesty. Without honesty it is impossible for friends to appreciate the quality of their love for each other; unless we represent to each other who we are in truth, we cannot judge the purity of our motives or the degree of our sacrifice. This honesty John did not know until the end of the movie when he is uncovered and is now able to be loved just as he is. It is no matter that this was done by an enemy who sought to destroy him. It was still for his benefit, even if it brought him momentary pain and heartache.
There is still another reason why friendships require honesty. Insofar as friends inspire each other by their example, they need to recognise their virtues without cause for doubt. John was seen by his audience as someone who in his despair found the willingness to forgive and love unconditionally. When John gave his big radio address, he did not rail against sinister political actors or a corrupt system, as he would have been justified doing, and which people expected. Instead, he talked about the need for each person, especially those ordinary, downtrodden people like him, to start loving their neighbors in spite of any obstacles that divided them. As much as John wanted to believe the words he read, this was still an act. His words implied an almost supernatural level of humility and wisdom that surpassed John Willoughby’s capacity. While his life on the road had been a hard one, John’s main complaint was suffering a career ending injury to his pitching arm. In his eyes, the worst injustice he ever received was the bad calls of an umpire. In the simplicity of his life, there was no need for the great virtue projected by John Doe. Now, however, before millions of people, John must pretend a font of charity exceeding all the evils of the world. This is too much for any man, let alone a humble baseball player thrust into circumstances beyond his control.
Hence, the fitting end on the top of City Hall at midnight on Christmas Eve. Frank Capra had struggled to find an ending to this movie because he couldn’t identify the hero to save the day. The putative good-guys of the movie – John, Ann, the editor Connell – were all affected by the original sin of the John Doe lie. Though their intentions were good, and possessing clear virtues that surpassed the other characters in the movie, they could not overcome the evil plans of Norton, who knew how to use their deception and earthly fears against them. In the end, it is the random kindness of the John Doe Club members that overcomes Norton’s evil. Sure, they may have been inspired by John and his movement originally. But this was only an incidental cause. They were sustained by an agent much more powerful, whom Ann claims to have kept the John Doe idea alive for two thousand years. In her desperate entreaty on the roof of City Hall, Ann reminds the viewer as much as John Willoughby that we already have our perfect exemplar of love, even if in our vain self-regard we forget Him. ‘That’s why those bells are ringing, John. They’re calling to us, not to give up, to keep on fighting, to keep on pitching.’
THE END
