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It's a journal on our relationship to failure, Charlie Brown
a month ago
General
So I rewatched A Boy Named Charlie Brown last night thinking I’d get some nice soft nostalgia vibes, you know, Guaraldi’s cozy piano and maybe some comforting cartoon sadness. Instead it kind of cracked me open like a walnut. This movie isn’t cute. It’s like an emotional mirror that politely asks, “Hey, remember all your failures? Let’s sit with those for ninety minutes.” It’s gentle, but it hurts in that slow, quiet way that sneaks up on you.
What really hit me this time is how the film doesn’t make a big deal about failure. It’s not some huge cinematic meltdown moment. It’s just part of life. Charlie Brown loses the spelling bee and it’s not tragic or inspirational. It just happens. The silence that follows is the real gut punch. He stands there, small and awkward and still. No music, no crowd reaction, just a wide shot that basically says, “Yeah, that’s it. You blew it.” And then he goes home. The sun’s still out. People are living their lives. Nobody even cares. That’s the part that kills me. The world keeps spinning like it didn’t just collapse on him.
And then you start to notice the pattern. Every little failure in the film is another football moment. The baseball games, the kites, the dumb spelling bee, it’s all the same loop. Build-up, hope, fall. Cut to silence. Then back to normal. The movie trains you into that rhythm until it feels almost holy, like a meditation on disappointment. Schulz basically made a film that says, “You can’t escape losing, but you can learn to breathe through it.” The pacing, the pauses, the weirdly flat tone is all makes failure feel ordinary. Not this horrible rupture in the universe, just something that happens because that’s what life does.
But what I love is that it’s not cruel about it. There’s no cynicism. Charlie Brown’s pain isn’t a punchline. The movie never tells him to toughen up or try harder or manifest positive vibes. It just lets him exist in the ache. Like, yeah, you failed. That’s okay. The world’s still here. You’re still here. That tiny bit of kindness buried in the melancholy is everything. It’s so real I could scream.
By the end nothing changes. No happy montage. No miraculous win. Just another morning. Another sky. Another try. And somehow that’s the most hopeful thing in the world. Because the real magic of Charlie Brown isn’t in ever kicking the football, it’s in the fact that he keeps running at it, every damn time, knowing full well what’s coming. That’s what the film’s really teaching: how to make peace with the fall, how to keep your heart open anyway. The world doesn’t stop for your mistakes. But the music keeps playing, soft and sad and weirdly warm, and you get up and try again. And maybe that’s what grace looks like.
What really hit me this time is how the film doesn’t make a big deal about failure. It’s not some huge cinematic meltdown moment. It’s just part of life. Charlie Brown loses the spelling bee and it’s not tragic or inspirational. It just happens. The silence that follows is the real gut punch. He stands there, small and awkward and still. No music, no crowd reaction, just a wide shot that basically says, “Yeah, that’s it. You blew it.” And then he goes home. The sun’s still out. People are living their lives. Nobody even cares. That’s the part that kills me. The world keeps spinning like it didn’t just collapse on him.
And then you start to notice the pattern. Every little failure in the film is another football moment. The baseball games, the kites, the dumb spelling bee, it’s all the same loop. Build-up, hope, fall. Cut to silence. Then back to normal. The movie trains you into that rhythm until it feels almost holy, like a meditation on disappointment. Schulz basically made a film that says, “You can’t escape losing, but you can learn to breathe through it.” The pacing, the pauses, the weirdly flat tone is all makes failure feel ordinary. Not this horrible rupture in the universe, just something that happens because that’s what life does.
But what I love is that it’s not cruel about it. There’s no cynicism. Charlie Brown’s pain isn’t a punchline. The movie never tells him to toughen up or try harder or manifest positive vibes. It just lets him exist in the ache. Like, yeah, you failed. That’s okay. The world’s still here. You’re still here. That tiny bit of kindness buried in the melancholy is everything. It’s so real I could scream.
By the end nothing changes. No happy montage. No miraculous win. Just another morning. Another sky. Another try. And somehow that’s the most hopeful thing in the world. Because the real magic of Charlie Brown isn’t in ever kicking the football, it’s in the fact that he keeps running at it, every damn time, knowing full well what’s coming. That’s what the film’s really teaching: how to make peace with the fall, how to keep your heart open anyway. The world doesn’t stop for your mistakes. But the music keeps playing, soft and sad and weirdly warm, and you get up and try again. And maybe that’s what grace looks like.
roochak
~roochak
Someone or other on Simone Weil: "The cause of grace is outside man, but its condition is within him." And you've just taught me what Charlie Brown and the great Marxist mystic have in common.
