Best Years of Our Lives shows a representative sample of three
categories of returning soldier: The upper class son who comes back with rough manners and
friends that puzzle and sadden his mother; an upper class husband and father who comes home to
loving and happy wife and teenage children but cannot feel the carefree happiness and love of
life they feel; the wounded and disfigured son of a prosperous working class family who has to
adjust to being the same son but in a changed, dependent body and who has to watch his parents
try to adjust as well. The first two can get out, go to some sort of work and try to rediscover
ordinary life but the third is physically limited and psychologically bound to his parents
home.
This overview shows that in one sense, the film does not represent a
true picture of returning soldiers as not all were from prosperous or upper class families, nor
were all who returned in as good a condition as the characters: many were much worse off; some
were only...
No comments:
Post a Comment