Watch Free The Way We Get By Movie Online Download Hollywood Film English Video

Posted on July 05th, 2009 in Movies

American service men and women are a frequent sight at the Bangor International Airport in Maine; many troops returning from overseas assignments pass through the airport as they make their way home or to their next mission. Since the United States invasion of Iraq in 2003, over 800,000 U.S. soldiers have arrived at Bangor International, and nearly all of them have been met by Bill Knight, Joan Gaudet and Jerry Mundy. Calling themselves “the Maine Troop Greeters,” Knight, Gaudet and Mundy are three senior citizens who see to it that every soldier returning to America is given a warm and encouraging welcome, a hug or a handshake and the use of a cell phone so they can call their loved ones, no matter when their plane touches down. While the Greeters have their own troubles to deal with — failing health, the loss of loved ones, loneliness — their work with the soldiers gives them both a sense of purpose and a perspective that makes their own troubles easier to bear. Joan Gaudet’s son Aron Gaudet is a filmmaker, and his documentary The Way We Get By chronicles the work of the Maine Troop Greeters, the story behind the three tireless volunteers, and how their project has touched the men and women they welcome nearly every day. The Way We Get By was an official selection at the 2009 South By Southwest Film Festival. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide
Aron Gaudet’s touching, heartbreaking, inspiring, beautiful documentary “The Way We Get By” is not about the boy, who is seen only in one brief shot near the start of the film. The movie follows instead three seniors who fill their days and nights at the Bangor International Airport, determined to greet every veteran returning from duty in Iraq and Afghanistan. Bangor is the first stop in (and the last stop out) for the troops – 750,000 of them since 2003, every single one of them counted – and these volunteers understand the importance of a handshake, a hug, a friendly face to a soldier who’s been away from home for far too long.

Every handshake is a selfless act of kindness that stirs the heart. The volunteers also offer snacks, conversation, free cell phone calls home. There’s something wonderful about seeing someone call a loved one for the first time in who knows how long – and that brings us back to the power of the boy and his sign. Think what you will about the military or the war they’re fighting, but it comes down to this: here are people who have been away too long. Homesickness and heartache and the joy of a loved one. Few things are as human as that.

The film is also about growing old, and that point where you wonder if you’ve made a difference. The three seniors here are searching for a purpose, and greeting the troops gives them that purpose. Consider a scene where Jerry Mundy, the 73-year-old former Marine, presents a coin given to him by a soldier heading to Iraq. The soldier asked Jerry to hold onto it until he returns. “But I won’t remember you,” Jerry honestly admitted to the young man. “I’ll remember you,” said the soldier. And so Jerry carries the coin with him everywhere, a reminder that somebody out there is thinking of him. Jerry might not admit it, but he needs something like that. His son died years ago. He seems to have no family, just his trusty dog, Mr. Flannigan.

86-year-old World War II vet Bill Knight is just as lonely, even more so. “I’ve outlived my usefulness,” Bill laments, admitting that troop greeting “puts a little meaning back in my life.” He’s knee-deep in credit card debt; his farmhouse, filled to the roof with a lifetime of packrat collections (his attic contains 25 vacuum cleaners), is eventually sold off, his possessions gone to auction, his pets, too many to count and too expensive to feed, given to the pound. He moves into a trailer park. Does he worry about dying alone?, an interviewer asks him. He begins to answer, then trails off into thought. Would any of us want to die alone?

Joan Gaudet, age 75, is the director’s mother (although Aron Gaudet wisely avoids making an appearance in the film, keeping the focus on his subjects, not himself; even the interviews are conducted instead by his producer, Gita Pullapilly). She’s there to greet the troops but hides when they have to deploy, never sure what to say in such a heartbreaking moment. She will eventually attend one deployment: that of her granddaughter, Amy, who will serve as a rescue pilot. Unlike Jerry and Bill, Joan has a large family to keep her together. Amy’s impending tour of duty fills Joan with dread.

Gaudet doesn’t force his themes upon the movie. They’re there in the corners, or when his trio of seniors decides to opine – thoughts on service, patriotism, family, having a place in the world – but the filmmaker lets these ideas come forth naturally. “The Way We Get By” is more successful at being inspiring than dozens of preachier efforts because it focuses wholly on the personal stories of its three subjects. We’ll bring our own views of the war into the film, but they won’t matter; we’re too swept up by the genuine kindness of three decent people. Gaudet does here what all documentaries should strive for: introducing us to real people, and making us care.

Consider one scene, late in the film. All it shows is Amy, donning her bulletproof vest, preparing to leave for her tour in Iraq. No words are said. None are needed. It’s a gut-wrenching moment because we know how Joan feels about Amy leaving, how she fears for her, how the very sight of Amy readying for battle would leave Joan in tears. (It left me in tears, too.)
Wearing its heart on its sleeve and everywhere else, “The Way We Get By” is an unabashedly patriotic, sentimental and somewhat unsettling look at aging in America, as experienced by three Maine seniors who spend their plentiful spare time greeting soldiers who have come home from war. Although the trio’s work as “troop greeters” is the film’s ostensible subject, their renewed and somewhat tenuous sense of purpose gives the doc its bite. The winner of several awards from top-flight festivals, film is guaranteed to elicit response when it airs on PBS later this year.

Focusing on three residents of Bangor, Maine — the first/last air stop for troops en route to/from Iraq and Afghanistan — “The Way We Get By” makes its essential point almost immediately: What Joan Gaudet, 75, Bill Knight, 86, and Jerry Mundy, 73, give to the returning soldiers at Bangor airport is more than equaled by what they get in return.

Gaudet (mother of helmer Aron), is an empty-nester with chronic back pain; Mundy still grieves for the son he lost when the boy was a child and spends a lot of time at the airport sitting in his truck with his dog; Knight, a widower with cancer, has let his house become overrun with cats and rubbish, but is a faithful, hand-shaking master of ceremonies as Marines come off the jetway.

What would the three do if they weren’t making soldiers feel more welcome? The answer looms over the film like snow clouds in Maine.

“The Way We Get By” doesn’t have a narrative arc to speak off and spins its wheels a bit, repeating the same points. It also appears to strain to remain apolitical. But not always. “When Mr. Bush said ‘mission accomplished,’ ” says Mundy, in one of the film’s rare editorial moments, “he didn’t know what the hell he was talking about.”

Saying that, Mundy admits, makes him feel unpatriotic. But so does not saying it. The greeters support the troops regardless, but “we don’t necessarily support the reason they got sent there.”

Producer Gita Pullapilly, who doubles as interviewer, asks the tough questions. “Are you afraid of dying,” she asks Knight. “Are you afraid of dying alone?” Maybe, but he’s not afraid of the question, and given that Knight’s mortality is such a large issue, Pullapilly’s frankness is welcome.

Some of the more disturbing scenes, at least for this viewer, are of Knight’s home, which looks like it was decorated by dumpster. He does, during the film, start to fix things up, and one can’t help wonder whether, if not for the war and its participants — who often seem to live in an alternate universe to mainstream America — he would have let things go further to seed and squalor.

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