copyright 2009, The Washington Post Their first glimpse of U.S. soil is the single asphalt runway at the Bangor International Airport in Maine. The first citizen they see is often Bill Knight, posture bent but not broken, pushing 90, wearing his World War II veteran cap, pumping the hand of every soldier that deplanes after serving in Iraq or Afghanistan. Knight, troop greeter at this gateway airport, is one of three senior citizens profiled, challenged and honored by 'The Way We Get By,' a lyrical documentary guaranteed to jerk tears and tug hearts. There are no dusty dispatches from Baghdad or Helmand province. There are no protests. There is no rhetoric. It's not that kind of war documentary. 'The Way We Get By' strikes a rich vein of emotion that flows through America's senior citizenry, and it should be required viewing for anyone who thinks they know what America is about. Knight, Joan Gaudet and Jerry Mundy (average age: 78) are cute as buttons, have the right mix of sass and wisdom, and are naturals in front of a camera. They greet almost every military plane that lands at the airport, sometimes arriving at 4 a.m. with a bright smile and a warm hug, and they grapple with the rubs of old age at home. Knight, a widower with cancer, staves off loneliness in a farmhouse overrun with cats. Gaudet has an aggressive pill regimen that saps her energy. Mundy, whose closest friend is his dog, has never gotten over the long-ago death of his 10-year-old son. And yet they go about the business of helping others. Their quiet devotion might be nauseating if trusted to the wrong storyteller, but filmmakers Aron Gaudet (Joan's son) and Gita Pullapilly aren't out to canonize their subjects or comment on war. Instead, they map the emotional territory around mortality, the burden of living and the specter of a lackluster legacy. There is a cyclical movement in this perfectly titled documentary, which skims the surface at first and slowly circles deeper, finding a poetic echo in Knight's own military service, sharing in Mundy's evolving grief, watching Gaudet learn to say goodbye instead of 'welcome home.' 'The Way We Get By' is not so much a slice of life as the whole pie, the highs and lows of twilight living, all found and filmed in an airport terminal in Maine. 'The Way We Get By' (unrated, 86 minutes) contains no objectionable material. 