The Best Years Of Our Lives has aged gracefully as a character drama that is honest and thoughtful about the reintegration struggles of soldiers after the war

Rating: 8/10 (13 April 2020)

The Best Years Of Our Lives is a remarkable achievement. It came out when the harsh realities of PTSD-like symptoms and the general realities of war were rarely taken so seriously in society. The film was bold enough to even go a step further and show how societal expectations of them are at odds with what they need. Time and time again in the first half of the film, we see characters happy to see the veterans return and explicitly expect them to put the war behind them and move on, while clearly it was both a formative experience which is emotionally important to the men as well as being traumatic and something they can't get out of their heads as much as they try. While the three main characters all deal with this general challenge, their specifics are each quite distinct which allows us to understand the facets of integration challenges. For Homer, the challenge is simple but the most difficult to ignore: his handicap. This is one of the major ways the film was bold - even now, physical handicaps are something of an uncomfortable subject rarely touched in art, and that was only that much more true 74 years ago. For Al, it's feeling out of touch with his family. For Fred, who for my money is the central protagonist of the story, it's a more complex combination of trauma, a strained relationship with his wife, and a feeling of occupational inadequacy, all of which feed into each other. One of the ways the film surprised me was in the gradual transition to the psychological character drama of the first half into the more romance-heavy plot of the second half. After letting the film sit for a bit, it makes more sense to me, as I interpret the romance as the way Fred and Homer end up successfully reintegrating. Homer was frustrated with his own inability to do all he used to be able to do, and his self-doubt made him believe Wilma wouldn't truly love him, but pity him. Fred realized that money was how his wife judged his worth, and that she expected him to put the war behind him. On the other hand, Peggy cared for him as a person, and he felt more self-assured the more he accepted his love for Peggy. Al doesn't have as clear a reintegration arc as the other two - he seems to be more easily able to return to how his life was, albeit with an appreciation for the character of people rather than just their collateral.
I love the scene where Fred is going through the old planes and goes in one just to remember what it was like. He was highly successful and was deeply invested in his job as a bomber, and seeing him instinctively drawn back to them was wonderful, followed by him finding himself a job out of thin air. I also love the repeated focus on the ribbons, as a symbol for how people saw the war as an interesting thing that happened but something they completely detach from the sacrifices and human side of the war that those ribbons represent. This is exemplified when Fred's wife insists he wear the uniform, just for the cool factor of the appearance. The cinematography is very layered throughout, as we frequently see background character reactions to the main characters. The wedding scene is an easy example of this, as we see the joy surrounding Wilma and Homer while Fred and Peggy eye each other and get increasingly emotional as they hear the wedding vows. It's very impressive for such a long movie to have no drag but to be engaging and evolving throughout, and I expected it even less from a 1946 character drama/romance. I was thrown off by the seeming transition away from the effects of war and PTSD in the second half, but I now think we do see the gradual integration in the second half as a resolution to this struggle. Great movie that has flawed characters we can root for and thoughtful, honest consideration of postwar society.