12. Wish You Were Here &..

Lyrics

So, so you think you can tell
Heaven from Hell,
Blue sky's from pain.
Can you tell a green field
From a cold steel rail?
A smile from a veil?
Do you think you can tell?

And did they get you to trade
Your heroes for ghosts?
Hot ashes for trees?
Hot air for a cool breeze?
Cold comfort for change?
And did you exchange
A walk on part in the war
For a lead role in a cage?

How I wish, how I wish you were here.
We're just two lost souls
Swimming in a fish bowl,
Year after year,
Running over the same old ground.
And how we found
The same old fears.
Wish you were here.


Out of all the great classic rock groups Pink Floyd is perhaps the most unique one. More then perhaps any other famous band they tried to experiment with their songs and do things nobody else really did. Pink Floyd is also one of the few bands I think who were more interested in rock as a form of art then as a form of entertainment. This is all very admirable, but I am not really a fan of their music. Their songs don't really connect with me. I do like Wish You Were Here a bit more then their other songs though. It's about Syd Barrett, a founding member of Pink Floyd who was their lead vocalist and songwriter. Unfortunately he had to leave them because of a combination of drug abuse and mental illness. I didn't want to choose a movie dealing with madness again though. But I think that without any background knowledge the song can also be interpreted to be about someone returning from war and having trouble to adjust to normal life again. So I chose a classic movie about men returning home from the World War II. Admittedly this is not the greatest link between a song and movie, but it was a very good movie and I don't know when I would have seen it otherwise.

The Movie: The Best Years of Our Lives (William Wyler, 1946)

This is a very good movie that caught me by surprise. I knew that it was a classic movie about three men returning home after fighting in World War 2. I expected that it would be an incredibly dramatic film in which the returned soldiers would have to overcome enormous psychological problems and other such stuff. I expected it also to be sometimes insufferably patriotic and full of heightened melodrama. None of this is true. The movie is very down to earth, feels incredibly modern, and even finds room for some comic relief and light romance. It is also often very realistic. The scenes where the three soldiers return home to see their family again after such a long time could not be better handled and executed. They get everything right. The anxiety you have when you'll see someone again you haven't seen in a long time, the relief and happiness when you see that person again, the blissful first day(s) when you and your old friends and family come together and are just happy to be together without worrying about what will come next, and the end of the blissful days when you have to start living normal life again.

The three soldiers to return are Fred Derry, Al Stephenson and Homer Parrish. Al returns to his wife of 20 years and their children. He needs some time to get used to his wife and children (who he finds have grown considerably, both physically and mentally). Fred can't get a good job after returning from the war. This is the cause of tensions between him and his demanding wife, whom he married just 20 days before the war. On top of this he falls in love with Peggy, Al's daughter. Homers story is the saddest. He has lost both his arms in the war, but his problems are psychological. He can control the mechanic hooks he got in the place of his arms very well. He is mostly afraid of the reactions of his loved ones, including his girlfriend Wilma. He pushes her away because he is convinced she wouldn't want to marry him now. This story has some added poignancy, because Homer is played by Harold Russell, an untrained actor who really lost his arms in the war. It's not much of a surprise that in the end everything will end happily for everyone involved. Yet the movie is never boring. Mostly because these are some of the most convincingly real and pleasant characters I've ever seen in a Hollywood movie. That's quite an achievement for a movie from 1946.

The role of the women in this movie is pretty interesting. During the war the men were fighting abroad so the women at home had to keep the country running. Many of them had to do jobs usually reserved for men. They did this quite successfully and this made them feel more independent. This is reflected in the movie. The women are on the same level as, and sometimes even above, the men. They have their own ideas, they can take care of the family, they are quite simply empowered. It's noticeable for example that not only does Peggy drive a car, but she is behind the wheel even with a man in the car. In fact I don't remember ever seeing a woman being driven by a man in this film. And when the tensions between Fred and his wife become too much, it is her who demands a divorce. The women in this movie are more empowered then they are in many modern movies.

In the IMDB trivia section on this movie I read that the director absolutely hated the score composed for the movie. Well, he was right, it is absolutely horrible. It is incredibly bombastic, and it never fits in the movie. It feels as if it is composed for some completely different movie. On top of this it isn't even pretty to listen to it. This is pretty annoying and can sometimes pull you right out of the movie. Still, that should not stop anyone from watching this movie. It is really very good.