The First of The Best

Rating: 7/10 (17 January 2012)

I think The Best Years of Our Lives is rightly justified as being on AFI's 100 Best Films list. However, It is a long and somewhat boring movie, but it's one of the first films to really show soldiers coming home back to, well, their regular lives again(The Best Years of Our Lives is the pioneer in that category, which is a very valid and significant topic in history). Going back to the same job, to the family you love, dealing with the same problems and/or new problems as is the case in Homer's situation. Life goes on and stands still for no one. The acting is fantastic in this movie, and it's also very significant in the fact that it is the very first film to ever use a disabled actor in a leading role, that actor being Harold Russell.
Originally I thought Russell's performance was perfect except for the fact that he seemed very disconnected to the girl he came back to, and what I mean by this is, it didn't seem as though Russell was connecting the emotion to the scene with her but then I realized that his disconnection was perfect in the scenes with the girl he came back to(played by Cathy O'Donnell). The confusion of what he's feeling is the true genius of his acting with O'Donnell in those scenes, whether he meant to or not, it was great acting and Russell won the academy award that year for best supporting actor.
This is a movie that makes you think and that will effect you more(that you will probably realize you like more) as it digests more in your system over a few days or a few months or even a few years. Every one of us can relate in some way to the 3 main characters in The Best Years of Our Lives and I, myself personally, have had a girlfriend just like Dana Andrew's character had in the movie, I mean delineated to the core, so I felt his pain in a lot of ways.
Also, I really enjoy the real world feeling this movie generates. It's a real solid script as There are no Cliché speeches given here. Things are dealt with in a real manner, a true to life manner and I respect that about this film.
The Best Years of Our Lives is a very significant movie, and should be seen, at least once, by anyone who considers themselves to be a film buff or film historian so that they can truly appreciate the pioneer movie of this kind of material.