The Best Years of Our Lives

World War II was a real bummer wasn’t it?  There have been so many films made dissecting and analyzing it.  The Best Years of Our Lives takes a look at it from a different angle though.  Instead of it being about the war itself it’s about what happens after the war.  You have all of these people that need to go home.  What do they do then?

This movie focuses on three G.I.’s coming back to small town America.  Homer, played by Harold Russell, is a young man who lost both of his hands and now has two hooks.  This is a real World War II veteran that lost his hands by the way.  He also won best supporting actor for this which is cool.  Al, played by Fredric March (Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1931), Inherit the Wind), is a middle-aged man that has a wife and two kids waiting for him.  Fred, played by Dana Andrews (Laura, The Ox-Bow Incident), is another young man, but older than Homer, who has a wife that he married only days before he shipped out to get back to.

They are all going back to the same town, Boone City, and meet on the plane ride there.  When they do get back they have trouble adjusting to normal everyday life.  When Homer is first dropped off we see that he lives in a suburban middle class house.  His parents and girlfriend come out to hug him but he can’t bring himself to put his arms around his girlfriend.  The hooks make him feel like a freak and he doesn’t know how to handle it so later that night he decides to go to his uncle’s bar, Butch’s Place. 

Meanwhile when Al gets to his apartment we see that it’s a fancy penthouse.  His family is happy to see him but he feels like he doesn’t know his children any longer because he hasn’t seen them in years.  His son looks like he’s in high school now and Al tries to give him a samurai sword and a bloody Japanese flag as souvenirs but it’s obvious that the son doesn’t really want these things and doesn’t know what to do with them.  Al’s daughter Peggy, played by Teresa Wright (The Pride of the Yankees, Shadow of a Doubt), looks like she’s in her early twenties now and handles his homecoming better.  His wife Milly, played by Myrna Loy (The Thin Man, The Great Ziegfeld), is a little nervous around him and sees that he’s not quite the same man as before.  Al becomes restless and wants to out on the town with Milly and Peggy.  After Al’s had a long night of drinking they eventually end up at Butch’s Place.

Fred first goes to see his parents who live in a shack by the railroad tracks.  They’re happy to see him but he doesn’t stay long because they tell him that his wife has moved into an apartment and took a job at a nightclub.  Fred decides to go find her but can’t so he also ends up at Butch’s Place. 

These three guys are glad to be home and pretty happy to see their loved ones but when they see each other again they get ecstatic.  So the three of them get very drunk and Fred starts to hit on Peggy.  We can tell from that moment that they’re gonna fall in love.  It always happens.  Even though this is mainly about veterans adjusting to life outside of the army there’s a love story as well.

So right off the bat they have no idea what to do with themselves.  They made it back to their home town and to their families, so now what?  Well they get drunk ‘cause they don’t know how to handle it.  When the three of them are together they don’t constantly trade war stories but they’re glad to be with others that experienced the same things.  It feels more comfortable to be around ex-servicemen than their own families.  Also, they all come from different backgrounds and are different ages but their experiences form a bond between them that they don’t share with their loved ones.

They all get treated a little differently in town too.  Al gets offered a higher position at his old job at the bank.  Fred gets offered pretty much the same position at the drugstore that he used to work at.  Unfortunately he can’t find work anywhere else so he has to take it.  We never find out if Homer gets a job though.

Everything they thought was going to be different is the same like Fred getting his old job back and everything they thought was going to be the same is now different like Al’s children growing up or Fred having to adjust to his new wife.  And it’s not only the vets that have to adjust it’s their families as well.  Homer’s parents don’t know how they should treat him.  They don’t know what he can and can’t do with these hooks.  Al becomes an alcoholic and it puts a strain on his marriage.  Fred barely knew his wife before and really doesn’t know her now.  She sleeps around and thought he would be more of a party animal like she is.  They don’t love each other and it’s not surprising to see their marriage fall apart because it seemed inevitable but it’s still kinda sad.  All he wants is to get a respectable job and have a faithful wife.

I think the saddest story though might be Homer’s because it’s more visual than the others.  There’s a part where he shows his girlfriend what he has to do at night before he goes to bed.  He needs someone to help him take his robe off, unbuckle his hooks and put the rest of his sleeping attire on.  He says that when he sees his hooks lying on the bed he’s really looking at his hands and that when he doesn’t have them on he feels helpless like a baby.  If his bedroom door closes shut during the night then he can’t open it and has to shout for help.  Homer’s girlfriend tries to understand but he keeps shutting her out.  He notices that everyone looks at him funny or looks away because he has hooks instead of hands.  He tells a story about how his dad was cleaning his pipe like he had done a million times before but suddenly stopped because he realized that he had hands and that his dad felt guilty about it.  Damn is that sad.

Al and Fred are kinda helpless too.  Al doesn’t like his new position that much and approved a loan to fellow G.I. even though he was a high risk.  His boss doesn’t want him doing that but Al isn’t a heartless bastard like he is.  Al just can’t turn this guy down.  He understands where he’s coming from and later in the movie makes a speech saying that he’s going to approve every veteran that wants a loan because that’s what they should be doing to help them.  And Fred can’t seem to get anywhere.  He tries to get a job, any job but no one will hire him because he doesn’t have any skills.  When he goes for the interview at the drugstore the manager says that all he can offer him is his old soda jerk job.

There’s one scene in here that shows something that definitely would never have crossed my mind and it’s where a guy comes into the drugstore and Fred serves him a sandwich.  Homer is also there having some ice cream.  The guy asks about Homer’s hooks.  By this time Homer has had so many people ask about them that he’ s come up with an amusing story to tell.  He says that he didn’t like his hands because they were too much maintenance so he got these new models.  He finally finds that humor is a way to deal with his problem.  But then the guy says that it’s too bad that he fought the war for nothing.  He then goes on to say that the U.S. was on the wrong side and should have been fighting with the Nazis and the Japanese.  This prompts Fred to punch the guy into a display case.  But it’s terrible that these veterans had to encounter some people that have no appreciation for what they did.  And not only that but that America was on the wrong side.  What a fucking asshole.  You would never think there would be prejudice against war veterans but I guess it’s something that really exists.  Towards the end of the film there’s another guy that was in the war but doesn’t like people that were in the air force like Fred.  What the fuck is going on?  They’re all on the same team and have all been through some horrible terrifying shit.  It’s so frustrating to see these guys being treated like jerks for defending their country and helping to save millions of lives.  Fuck.   

William Wyler (Roman Holiday, Ben-Hur) directed this extremely well.  There are lots of long takes that make it feel like a play sometimes.  You really get to know these characters and feel their frustration and pain.  The music that accompanies is typical 40’s style and of course works well.  There are even interesting musical cues like there’s a scene when Fred climbs into an old bomber plane and reminisces about being a bombardier.  The music sounds like planes flying by constantly and there’s a tremendous amount of tension.  Wyler also used as many people as he could that were World War II veterans for the crew.  And Wyler himself was in the war.  This definitely helped to give the movie a very unglamorous take on post war life.  As for the title I’m pretty sure it means that these servicemen spent the best years of their lives fighting in a war and coming to terms with their experiences.  And in many cases it takes years to finally find a way to cope with it.

This movie came out in 1946 so this problem was in full effect all across the country.  Wars not only fuck up the people that fight in them but they also fuck up their families and the community that they live in.  It’s all connected and everything relies on each other to function.  Al, Homer and Fred really struggle to fit back into society again and are forced to revisit their old war days whenever they look at their missing hands or have a traumatic nightmare or just interact with their families and everyday people who look at them or talk to them funny.  It’s a really moving picture.  It reminded me of that part in The Hurt Locker when Jeremy Renner comes home and can’t do something as simple as pick out a box cereal in a supermarket.  I mean how do you deal with people not telling you what to do constantly or someone not trying to kill you after having to worry about that for years?  I can’t imagine.  This is a great movie guys.  It’s a sad one but it touches on an interesting subject that I think doesn’t get talked about that much.