Film Review: The Best Years of Our Lives (1946)

When it comes to films portraying the post-war veteran experience in America, this film sets the gold standard.  Following the lives of three very different veterans returning home after World War II, it looks at the complexity of veterans' family lives and relationships, their struggles to find work, coping with serious injury and disability, and more.  One is a family man with nearly grown children; another is a newlywed who married his bride right before going off to war; and the third is a young man who is engaged to his childhood sweetheart.  They each face different challenges and different family and relationship dynamics upon their return, and because of this, we get to see a range of post-war veteran experiences rather than just one single experience.  This enhances the quality of this film rather than detracting from it, and it really draws us in to all of their lives.

The storytelling in this film is wonderfully rich and complex, and it tells a story that remains relevant to this day, with struggles our own recent veterans are now facing in readjusting to civilian life, finding work, and reconnecting with their loved ones as changed men and women who are not the same as they were before they went to war.  It has the added bonus of actually using a disabled veteran actor, Harold Russell, to play the disabled veteran character, Homer Parrish, a double arm amputee who uses prosthetic hooks.  Using disabled actors to play disabled characters is unfortunately quite rare in films even today.  My one criticism is that Harold Russell, who was an unknown newcomer when he was cast in this role, does not share top billing with the other leads, despite being a lead character himself, and I understand that this is a result of Hollywood star power buying top billing, but it is important to note that Harold Russell won two Oscars for his role as Homer Parrish in this film and did a superb job portraying the depth and complexity of this character.

For me, Homer was the most compelling character of the film.  He returns home having already been through rehab and occupational therapy and having learned how to use his prosthetic hooks to the best of his ability.  The film highlights many of the things he has learned how to do, as well as those things which he cannot do, with or without his hooks, such as buttoning his own shirt.  But the film also looks at his relationship with his high-school sweetheart turned fiancee, Wilma, and his fears and insecurities about facing her with his new reality.  My favorite scene in the film comes toward the end where Homer and Wilma finally address these fears.

If you are interested in stories that really explore the issues faced by returning veterans, I've seen none better than this one; and if you liked the post-Vietnam War film "Coming Home", you will love this film.  It has romance, drama, and above all, realism.  It is a true and seemingly timeless classic and I highly recommend it.  You won't be disappointed.

Short Story Review: "Helping Hand" by Eden LaFont

A little bit of research and a lot more detail could have made this story so much better, but I applaud the author's willingness to go where so very, very few others have dared to go in romantic/erotic literature.  I would not recommend buying this short story, however, because it lacks some very important elements which are both basic and necessary for good erotic literature.

I really wanted to be turned on by this story.  Truly, I did, but there just wasn't enough detail in the story to build myself a mental picture of the male lead, and the sex in the story lacked the emotion and sensuality that draws female readers in and makes us really feel and connect with the eroticism of a story.  Female readers like a story that ignites our emotions and not just our sex drives.  We like details that help us to visualize the characters and the scene.  And we like there to be an actual reason for the connection between the two romantic leads.  We like characters in whom we can see ourselves, and we like characters who are complex.  This story had none of these elements, and it was thoroughly lacking in emotional connection and eroticism.

While it was great to find a story with a double arm amputee male sexual/romantic lead, which is extremely rare to find, more detail and realism regarding James's arms would have greatly improved the story. For example, we are told that James has lost his arms in an accident, but we have absolutely no idea of how much of his arms he lost or the appearance of what he has left. The narrator describes them as "nubs" and "nubby arms", but we don't know if he lost them above or below the elbows, and we don't really have an idea of what James looks like or how he moves as a result of his injuries. As a woman with personal experience with the story's subject matter, I can tell you that these details do make a difference, both to the ways the characters touch one another and to the way the male lead wears and uses his prostheses.  There is a whole world of possibilities for erotic touch between a woman and a double arm amputee and the author sadly ignored all of them. 

Additionally, a bit more proofreading would have been nice. "Scaring" only has one "r".

For the low price I paid for the story on Amazon Kindle ($0.99), it was alright, and it definitely wasn't the same old story we've all read a thousand times, but there is definitely room for improvement.  If you want a really superb story to read with a similar theme, I recommend "Support Our Troops" by Robyn Bradley.  It's so very much better than "Helping Hand".