The Way We Get By

Moving "The Way We Get By" plays at Cleveland International Film Festival

Clint O'Connor, Cleveland Plain Dealer

“Grade: A...There are moments in "The Way We Get By" that cut right to your heart.”

Unless Debra Winger is dying, I don't cry at movies. But I definitely choked up a few times during "The Way We Get By."

There are moments in Aron Gaudet's moving documentary that cut right to your heart. And that's despite its woefully unappealing premise: old people greeting troops at an airport. Bangor International Airport in Maine is the official exit and entry point for soldiers and Marines heading to and from Iraq and Afghanistan. We're talking hundreds of thousands of American men and women since 2003.

Gaudet followed three seniors (Bill, Jerry and Joan), who are there every day offering hugs and help, and glimpsed inside their lives. It's a sincere, authentic, enriching film about decency, death and the sharp-edged emotions of sending someone you love to war.