Note: This is #22 in my 52 Classic Movies in 52 Weeks challenge for 2009.
Here’s a question every generation has to answer, hopefully not too many times: What happens when veterans come home from a war? Released right around the time this was happening after World War II, The Best Years of Our Lives follows the interconnected lives of three veterans coming home to a small, midwestern town. One is a formerly successful banker with an apparently perfect family, one is a down-and-out but stand up guy whose wife turned floozy while he was gone, and the third is a young sailor who was maimed in an accident that took his hands and replaced them with hooks.
Compared to the concept of the world war, this is a trio of relatively small stories, but the story telling and film are very well done. You get a real sense of human drama as these people and their families try to cope with assimilation back into a post-war world. They not only struggle with drastic changes to their bodies (hello, hooks for hands!) but their families, marriages, workplaces, and societies in general. Yet it pulls up well short of melodrama and manages to always stay interesting to watch.
The ensemble cast of actors in this one also do a really good job, with just about everything coming off as natural and flowing. Of particular note is the guy who played the sailor with the lost hands, who even though he wasn’t a professional actor was good enough at it to win an Academy Award. And you get a happy ending! What’s not to like?
Trailer below. Oddly, the Homer character is hardly there to be seen at all.
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