Pic courtesy: https://www.rogerebert.com
‘The Best Years of Our Lives’ (1946)
This William Wyler film narrates the story of three war veterans on their way back home, unsure about everything they had left behind to serve in the war. Al Stephenson is the eldest of the three, an army man and ex-banker; Fred Derry is a bomber pilot, a self-taught, self-made enterprising man, with no particular vocation to seek refuge in; Homer Parrish, a Naval Petty Officer who has lost both his hands in service, is staring at what seems like a hapless life seeped in the anxiety over the quality of support from family and friends: how much of it would be wilful, and how much of it obligatory.
On the face of it, the uneasy homecoming poses different challenges, but the hurt of the oozing wounds is equally crippling for all three. And yet, the film ends on a note of organic hope, which leaves the viewer reeling in the effect of the tragic optimism that Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche patented: “Tragic optimism is the mood of the strong man who seeks intensity and extent of experience even at the cost of woe and is delighted to find that strife is the law of life.”
All three lead players - Fredric March as Al, Dana Andrews as Captain Fred Derry, and Harold Russell as Homer Parrish - offer a priceless acting masterclass for anyone who wants to move up the value chain of film portrayals. The last mentioned was actually a World War II veteran who lost both his hands in the course of service. An ‘untrained actor’, his performance is a case study that scores of film schools minting money from unsuspecting aspirants should learn from. If they also watch Fredric deliver a rousing speech in an inebriated state and Dana ruminating over his flying days in the cockpit of a discarded warplane, they will know a lot more about what acting is all about.
Talk of iconic cinema and film folks go gaga over products like ‘Citizen Kane’ and ‘How Green Was My Valley’, both enduring works of art no doubt, but sadly marred by mediocre acting and a generous sprinkling of inadvertently comic frames.
The praise reserved for ‘The Best Years of Our Lives’ - a seamlessly flawless and timeless film - is surprisingly guarded in mainstream circuits, and the reason is amply clear. Wyler refrains from underlining situations and character viewpoints (that studios crave for and the audience is taught to lap up) and instead lets Robert Sherwood’s brilliant screenplay unleash itself in a discernibly matter-of-fact recitation, steering clear of accentuating the drama of life, for life in itself is a wholesome theatre of the absurd, awkward, average, and awe-inspiring, all rolled into one epic narrative. Why underline it with high-octane drama? Gregg Toland’s deep-focus cinematography helps us peel off layers of meaning, god sent for a film of this genre.
This simply profound approach to storytelling hardly provides the 'motivation' to construct a blockbuster review with outlandish labels like ‘Must Watch’, ‘Unmissable’ and the like. Hence, most factory-bound film critics don't seem to cherish this timeless classic.
Hence, it is even more hearteningly to note that ‘The Best Years of Our Lives’ was the first film to win eight Academy Awards - best picture, best actor (Fredric March), best director, best screenplay, best editing and best score. In another first, Harold Russell picked up two Oscars for the same role, one honorary and one for best supporting actor. The Oscars indeed raised the bar, hope they do that more often going forward!