Romancefest 4: The Way We Were

Screenwriting guru Syd Field said audience members subconsciously decide whether or not a movie is working within the first 10 minutes. Field's a little out of style these days, but I'm betting it's still a good sign when you have goose bumps by minute 7.

THE WAY WE WERE, directed by the recently late, always great Sydney Pollack, plays like a response to what was wrong with LOVE STORY, maybe only because I watched them back to back. Still, it's tough not to be blown away by the sparks that fly when Robert Redford and Barbra Streisand let loose in this film. Their characters have so much more personality than the lovers in LOVE STORY. They have clear likes and dislikes, they have things to talk about, their arguments mean something. It's not just a "I care less than you care" contest or endless series of ball busting -- it's a couple of people who really have something to say to each other. People with opinions, people who live in a changing world and care about it, or don't. Anyway, if a love story is going to work, it needs these specifics, not the generalities LOVE STORY relied on.

Watching THE WAY WE WERE, I couldn't help but think of a conversation I recently had with a girl I kind of/sort of grew up with. I guess you could say I grew up without her. In any case, we were talking about how we're bad judges of age, and she said she dated a guy who was 21 for a while before she realized how much older she was than him. I asked if he was deliberately hiding it or if it never came up and how she figured it out, and she said she just started to notice how dumb he was.

"How do you mean, dumb?" I asked.

"Not dumb, but just an idiot," she said.

"What do you mean?" I asked.

I figured she meant he missed references to early 90s SATURDAY NIGHT LIVE sketches or something like that, but instead she said:

"It was just the way he viewed the world. Like he could still do something. Like he could still change the world. Like when we thought we could still go to Hollywood, become actors, whatever, make a difference. He still thought he could change things, politically."

It was a sad thing to say, but true, and THE WAY WE WERE reminds me of that. It's the story of Hubbell Gardner (Robert Redford), a frat boy and athlete, all around mainstream American boy, who meets Katie Morosky (Barbra Streisand) in college and finds her to be basically the opposite of him -- for instance, she's the head of the college communist party in the days between the World Wars. He's a WASP, she's Jewish. He seems to have money, she has to work for it.

Still, they find themselves drawn to each other -- Hubbell respects how Katie speaks out, and Katie is not only physically attracted to Hubbell but gets glimpses at something a little deeper beneath the surface that differentiates him from his friends -- he's a budding and talented writer, and his work seems to show he's a little more self aware than he seems.

Years later, after college, they meet by chance in a bar and strike up a tentative and clumsy romance that eventually blooms into the real thing, despite their differences. Hubbell simply doesn't care and just wants everyone to get along. Katie finds it impossible not to care and can't help but push for her voice to be heard in an endless search for change. In a way, neither of them ever grew up. In another way, they both grew up differently.

Eventually the couple moves to Hollywood as Hubbell's first novel is bought by a movie studio, and thanks to the timing of history, it just happens to be the middle of the McCarthy-era witch hunts in which the very types Katie sympathizes with are being persecuted. Still, Hubbell just wants to make his way without making waves, and can't understand why Katie can't just leave it alone.

This movie marks two happy changes for Romancefest. First of all, no one dies. Secondly, the lead couple not only has chemistry but is the strongest part of the movie. The performances are great, but the characters are also well-written, so with those two factors working together we get some really good scenes. There's a heart-breaking scene Barbra Streisand plays on her own, on the phone with Redford on the other end, explaining to him that even though they've broken up he's still her best friend and she really needs her best friend to come over and keep her company. It's a tough scene to play out alone without anyone to bounce off of, and Streisand totally delivers, as she does in the rest of the movie.

But, the best scenes are when Streisand and Redford verbally spar. As I mentioned before, it's not the series of empty quips we got in LOVE STORY -- here we have a couple of characters who have definite opinions, arguing about real issues, both personal and political. And, you can relate to both of them -- it's clear why Hubbell gets fed up with Katie, but it's also tempting to give in to Katie's fierce determination. You can see where Hubbell's admiration of Katie comes from, even if she can be infuriating. But, her vulnerability is also irresistable. So what do you do? You can't be together, you can't be apart. Still, just because you're inexplicably drawn to someone doesn't mean you have to go to them. I guess that's growing up?

Another personal anecdote in service of this flick:

I was writing e-mails back and forth to a buddy of mine I went to high school with the other day, and we ended up talking about teenage angst, and he said something along the lines of this:

"Teen angst is the feeling that the whole world is against you, personally. But, as you grow up, you realize the whole world treats everyone the same and it's not just you."

Again, THE WAY WE WERE reminded me of this, with Redford's line to Streisand:

"Everything in the world does not happen to you personally."

But sometimes it feels like it might as well.