Think back for a moment. What were the best years of your life? What made those years the best? Was it the people you knew, the places you went to or in which you lived? The activities you did?

This week’s BP could have been given many different titles—A Long Time Coming, Homecoming, Soldiers’ Return, The Long Way Back, Life after War, etc., etc. Some of those might sound lame, but they all capture the basic gist of the film. Therefore, the movie’s actual title, The Best Years of Our Lives, seems a little odd. Just what particular years does the title denote? Who are the people referred to by “Our”? The film’s three returning veterans and their families all wrestle with this concept of when their lives were/are most meaningful—i.e., what the best years of their lives were, are, or will be.

The Stephenson family reunited.

For Al Stephenson and his family, his return home to Boone City means that he needs to reacquaint himself with his wife Millie and his now-grown children Peggy and Rob, and they need to get to know Al again. The complexity of their relationships arises when they all realize how much the war years have changed each of them. Al drinks more than he used to—in fact, he is frequently drunk and not entirely cogent in much of the film. Rob is unemotional, distant, and obsessed with modern-day facts—more interested in if his dad “happen[ed] to notice any of the effects of radioactivity on the people who survived the blast” at Hiroshima than in the sentimental presents his father has brought him from the conflicts in the Pacific. Peggy has taken the place of the Stephensons’ maid/cook, which displeases her father; but she appears to thrive in the role. More practical than her brother, Peggy also works in a hospital and throughout the film demonstrates compassion for others who are suffering in various capacities. Millie, Al’s wife, is the constant in the house, but she must learn to cope with Al’s heavy drinking and continual presence after years of separation.

Al and his family, then, seem to have experienced good years prior to his years in the service. For Al, his time in the military was a success (more good years), and he has returned to a prosperous, happy home. He is even offered a promotion at his previous job as a banker, the bank owner asking him to serve as vice president of a new division approving loans for returning servicemen, a promising position in which Al can help some of his brothers-in-arms. For Al’s family, his time away from them was filled with challenges to the way of life they were used to; but they adjusted and succeeded in retaining their positivity. In the case of the Stephensons, the viewer imagines that their future years could prove to be their best.

Homer attempts to dissuade Wilma from loving him by enlightening her about the constant difficulties he faces without hands.

For Homer Parrish and his family, it is clear that the future will not be simple or easy. Returning from the war with prosthetic hooks in place of his hands, Homer will be in a constant state of adjustment for a while, having to relearn the simplest actions and activities and forever lacking some aspects of independence. While Homer’s Uncle Butch implies that Homer’s family will get used to his new hands in time, Homer’s main concern is for his girlfriend Wilma, whom he had promised to marry upon his return home from the war. For Homer, a former stand-out high school football player, it would seem that the best years are behind him. The present is frustrating and lonely, and the future looks full of challenges. Ironically, it is Wilma, the one for whom Homer experiences the most anxiety, whose love allows him to hope for a brighter future than the one he had anticipated upon his arrival home. For Wilma, the war years were not the best time of her life, for she was missing Homer. His arrival renews her hope in the future—regardless of any physical difficulties he might face. Wilma’s faithfulness and patience combined with Homer’s optimism will no doubt sustain them both in the years to come.

Fred and his war wife Marie.

What years are the best for Fred Derry is also a complicated issue. For Fred, the time before the war was one of economic and personal struggle, stuck as he was in a job for which he had no passion. The war years were glorious for Fred, transforming him from a soda jerk into a military hero, one whose heroics had earned him the Distinguished Flying Cross. Upon returning home, though, Fred finds himself in a world that doesn’t necessarily have a place for him. He struggles to find employment and has to settle for his former mediocre job. He discovers his wife Marie, whom he met and married while in training and whom he hardly knows, doesn’t actually love him now that his monthly allotment checks have stopped coming and he isn’t always wearing his flashy uniform. Instead, Marie wants to spend her time in snazzy clubs with rich, handsome men. Poor Fred finds that his affections are really for Peggy, Al’s daughter; but Fred’s marriage to the flighty, selfish Marie prevents him from marrying for real love. Oddly, it is Marie, perhaps the most unlikeable character in the movie, who mentions the film’s title when she angrily tells Fred, “I gave up the best years of my life [to marry you]”—a reference to the fact that she views the war years, a time of absence and death, as the penultimate time of her life.

Fred battles some of his war demons in the nose of a discarded war plane.

At the end of the film (spoiler alert!), Fred is in the same condition as the hundreds and hundreds of war planes that have been dragged to the junk yard outside of Boone City. No longer necessary and unwanted in society, the once-proud planes sit useless in a field until they are dismantled, never to fly again. Fred wanders the field aimlessly, biding the time until he can catch a flight out of Boone City, having agreed on a divorce with Marie and having told Peggy he couldn’t continue their relationship. He climbs into the nose of a crippled B-17, wrestling with both his past and his present—a former time that he thought was glorious and a present time that was supposed to be. Ironically, Fred is called out of the plane by a former Army veteran whose new job is to dismantle the planes and use their materials for building houses. Fred asks for a job and is given one—he himself mirroring the recycling of the old war machines, the opportunity for a hopeful (domestic) future blooming from the remnants of the war. The film’s final image of Fred and Peggy kissing at Homer and Wilma’s wedding suggests that the future, while it will include hard work and economic struggles, holds the promise of being the best years for them as well.

For Me Then…

It is interesting to ponder the film’s title again. Could it be that the instant camaraderie of Al, Homer, and Fred indicates that the best time of their lives was during the war when they were constantly included in a brotherhood of men who were bonded by a thirst for life and a familiarity with death? Is the film saying that what brings about the best time of one’s life is something relationship-based?

Throughout the entire film, the three main characters struggle to resume/find their places in society, only to realize that society is eager to move on from the war—in fact, it would seem that American life has moved on and has left the returning servicemen behind. Tragically, their battlefield feats of courage and bravery along with military recognition gain nothing tangible for the returning veterans. While they attempt to block out the recurrent nightmares and relive the adrenaline-pumping heroics from the war, the rest of society stresses about veterans needing jobs and how future wars will make the losses of World War II irrelevant, leading the veterans to make the uncomfortable conclusion that they are irrelevant as well. However, while Al, Homer, and Fred flounder in society, separated from their war comrades who made the war years “the best,” they come to realize that other relationships—with their families and with the women they love—can offer a very similar type of love, a love that will sacrifice everything and continue regardless of difficulties. In that sense, we can hope the best years are ahead for Al, Homer, and Fred.