Movies without Villains

I just watch "A Tree Grows In Brooklyn" (talk about a movie that's going to make you cry) a movie which also puts me in mind of another movie of similar sentimental tone "I Remember Mama."

And just to toss another movie into that pot similar time late eighteen hundreds, turn of the century, but a very different tone "Life With Father."
All great movies.
No villains. Not a one to be found in any of these movies.

And what is interesting about them is this. Even when characters within these movies clearly have strong feelings against other characters when the little girl in TGIB is so angry with her Mother toward the end, even though we understand and we sympathize with the daughter, the larger point of view of the movie has shown us enough of the Mother that it invites us to understand her well enough so that we also sympathize with her.
We love the carefree and irresponsible Father. We understand and sympathize with the Mother who feels that she has to be hard in order to keep her family alive we sympathize with the daughter who's caught between them.
That, I think, is the point. There is clearly, invisible yet evident in this story, the voice of the storyteller - and it is a storyteller who knows and understand and loves all of these characters.

And loving all of them, it becomes impossible to reduce them, even when they do things that are not so nice, to the level of villains. We are compelling, in watching, not to judge though the characters may judge one another but to understand.
And inevitably, over the course of the story, the characters also move toward understanding one another.
NMS