The Best Years of Our Lives

Why it's worth watching

This masterpiece offers a deeply moving and realistic look at the struggles of returning World War II veterans as they adjust to civilian life. Through its rich characterizations, it captures the profound challenges of physical disability, trauma, and relational strain with immense empathy and dignity. It remains one of the most honest and emotionally resonant films about sacrifice and homecoming ever made.

For discernment

One of cinema's most honest films about veterans coming home, and the disabled sailor played by real-life amputee Harold Russell gives the marriage-and-disability scenes a dignity Hollywood rarely matched. Weigh honestly, though, that one of its three love stories is adulterous in shape: Fred, married to a shallow and unfaithful wife, falls for the good single woman Peggy, and the film's sympathies steer toward divorce and a fresh start as the happy ending. All three men also drink themselves drunk celebrating their return, and drinking recurs. The good is real and worth your time, marital faithfulness in the Al-and-Millie marriage, resilience, and the honest dignity of labor, but the believer should notice the film quietly endorses ending one marriage to enable a better-matched romance.

• Faith & familyA central romance has a married man falling in love with a single woman; the story steers sympathetically toward divorce and remarriage as its resolution.
• SubstancesAll three leads get drunk celebrating their homecoming and drinking recurs; one struggles with heavy drinking.
• SexualityPassionate kissing (including the married-man/single-woman pair) and a showgirl shown in a swimsuit with mild cleavage.

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