My Journey Through IMDB's Top #250

Rating: 7/10 (21 May 2018)

Title - The Best Years of Our Lives
Date Released (UK) - 5 March 1947
Average Rating at Time of Review - 8.1
Position in IMDB's Top 250 at Time of Review - #249
Directed By - William Wyler
Starring - Myrna Loy, Dana Andrews & Fredric Marsh
Plot - Three World War II veterans return home to small-town America to discover that they and their families have been irreparably changed.
To be honest, I'd never heard of this film before it came time to watch it. That fact along with the three-hour runtime of the film made me a little apprehensive. A film needs to be pretty great to make me want to pay attention for such a length and given that I'd never heard of it, my expectations weren't very high going in.
What I did think was that it seemed like a brave venture; coming out just a short while after the Second World War this film looks at how war can negatively impact a soldiers state of mind. Not to mention it was surrounded by war movies filled with adventure and heroics.
Watching the film, I realised that it wasn't the "pretty great" I needed to make me want to stick around, however it was enjoyable. Most importantly, it never felt like a slog - in fact I found myself quite surprised when the credits rolled. The fact that it never felt three hours long is a point in its favour.

Was it a brave film? In theory, yes. Based off of IMDB's plot description, yes. In actuality, no.
Whilst the film touched upon many very real issues that were (and still are) faced by soldiers returning home, I felt that they were sidelined pretty quickly in favour of the romance plot-line, in which two of veterans played critical roles. However the third veteran, the one with the most to say on post-war struggles given that he was an amputee, isn't important to the romantic sub-plot and has significantly less screen-time than the other two.
Of course, those two still face their own post-war issues, however they seem to forget them pretty quickly.
PROS:
-The Acting: The acting in this film was by far the best thing about. Everyone seemed to fit perfectly into their roles and there was no performance I felt was under-delivered. When any of the three main gentleman are on screen together the acting really sticks out and those were some of the most enjoyable moments in the film.

The Music: Music really helps to hold this film together and is used to great effect when acting as a scene-transition. It also doesn't feel intrusive and feels as though it belongs in the scene, unlike some other films from this same era.

The Writing: This is a film based around character interactions and they are done wonderfully and you can tell the cast had fun playing their characters. Even during the more somber character interactions, they are written flawlessly and makes the film feel very grounded, no doubt helped by the set design and costumes.

CONS:

The Plot: I can't think of a great many flaws in this movie, but I can easily think of one and it is perhaps the biggest flaw a film can have. As I mentioned above, this film is about character interactions. No matter how good those character interactions are they do not carry a film of this length, it must also have a compelling plot-line. This film falls short on that front. There weren't a whole lot of moments that spring to mind as "memorable" and if I were caught-off guard I imagine I would struggle to recap the events of the film, even at the time of writing this review three hours after watching. There is also the aspect I mentioned earlier in regards to the post-war difficulties being put to the side for a more cliché romance story.

This film could easily have been an hour shorter and due to the lack of a strong plot, it gets a lower rating than it perhaps could have. For every one thing I enjoyed about the film, there were 2 scenes that were completely inconsequential to the overall narrative.
On top of that, the most compelling character in the film is the one with the least story and the film never really delivered on demonstrating issues faced by soldiers coming home.
What they did show, however, was important.
That is what this film is and what this film was - important, especially during its time. There would have been many people going through a lot of the stuff that the three soldiers went through and this film showed to them that they weren't alone. Seeing even the most downtrodden characters lives improve throughout the film also allowed them to hope, when some of them may not have had the will for it.