Watch The Way We Were For Free

Yawn. Poorly Filmed Snooze Fest.

The Age of Commercialism

Let's be realistic.

I like movies that are aware of what they are selling... without [any] greater aspirations than to make people laugh and that's it.

Schmaltzy, dull, irritating.Set in the period from the mid-1930s to the 1950s, a love story involving two markedly different people. Katie is an idealistic, uptight, Stalin-loving political activist. Hubbell is an easy- going, athletic, All American-type, and a talented writer. We see their different personalities affect their relationship and how they manage despite the differences...Pretty much your stereotypical romantic drama, but with added dullness and schmaltz. So long-winded and pointless.There is potential for profound statement, especially when we run into the McCarthy witch-hunts, but this is handled so heavy-handedly that the movie defeats its own purposes.Elevating the nausea is Barbara Streisand, and her character, Katie. One of the most irritating characters in cinematic history. The fact that Hubbell sticks with her despite her personality being so off-putting harms any credibility the relationship had.Robert Redford puts in a solid performance as Hubbell, and his presence probably gives us a clue to why this movie is so highly rated. The producers' idea was probably "Hey, how about a romantic drama, with Robert Redford in uniform for the majority of it. Women will love it!". Sure does look like they fell for the ploy...

Hubbell Gardner in The Way We Were is an abominable man. He has no passion, and tries to stifle that in Katie-- from the beginning, when he references her love of knowledge and politics as "You never stop, do you?". Hubbell Gardner is an awful, awful man. All the while she's propping him up, and singing his praises, he's openly treating her coldly. She treated him far too well: from the beginning, remember how he was heading out the door to leave her apartment, and couldn't get out fast enough? He was cold and uncaring, and she sought him out with care anyway.He has no backbone, as when he willingly lets his book be mangled into a film-- the act to which she fully objects, thinking he deserves better. Instead, he tries to silence her again, and then weakly let his film be mangled. Hubbell wants Katie to stop challenging him to do better for himself, to want nothing more for him that he actually can work towards. She has more faith in him than he does, but he wants her quiet so he can take the easy way out. Multiple times, he tries to silence her- he frequently tells her to be quiet, and he actually puts his hand over her mouth at the party (granted, she's supposed to be Harpo- on a side note, how is putting on thick eyebrows enough for some of the guests to pretend they're in any swing of things as far as Marx brothers costumes go? It's as bad and dull as the jokes Hubbell's friends make- commentary forthcoming). He wanted her to accept his friends' horrible, dull environs and crass in the horrible, tasteless, unfunny way of humor, and was upset when she didn't want to partake of it. The only mistake Katie made was in thinking Hubbell was worth her time or efforts. She put her own life on hold to go with him to Hollywood to make his dull film. But while she was there, she still managed to make an impact, heading to Washington, D.C., to protest the House Un-American Activities Committee's blacklist. Thankfully at that point he didn't try to silence her, and actually came to her defense briefly to punch a guy who insulted her. Aside from that momentary gleam, Hubbell has no potential. And even then, he followed it with their core differences- he has no hope for the future, and doesn't mind the melancholy, drab, mediocrity he dwells in, whereas she seeks better and tries to implement it.Hubbell simply doesn't care for Katie, or for himself. He is perfectly content to live his vapid and pointless life, and doesn't mind hurting Katie along the way. Even his friend, J.J., who made those tasteless jokes, told Hubbell Katie was "really somebody" and somebody you "don't want to lose". Hubbell of course doesn't get it, and cheats on her with the very person J.J. considered no one special. Plus, Hubbell knows Katie is pregnant at the time.She finally ends it with him, and her giving birth is as sad as it should be happy- the baby is fine, but the relationship that could be- the potential she hoped for in him- is all gone.When they meet later, he is still incredulous at her ambition, or his inability to put a damper on it. Despite his attempts to make her dull, or lose hope, or become boring like him, Katie is still seeking change and a better future. He has no concept of trying, when he is so emphatic about stagnation and giving up. After she's left him standing with his new lady, she is done with him, and goes back across the street to protest the bomb. As she's focused on her demonstration, he follows her, crossing the street, just to say, "You never give up, do you?"When they were in college, Hubbell wrote a story feigning ambition, to have things not be easy- but it was all words. Sadly, even that story's recognition in their short story writing class led to real action by Katie, to stop pursuing her own writing, and tear up her work. She buys him a typewriter. He doesn't get one for himself- she gives him the tool. Still, as Hubbell, it was all a farce. Like the lies of the short story, Hubbell puts up a front, writing 8 chapters of a second novel, which later does not come to fruition. Katie asks if he ever intended to publish it: "No." If he ever wanted to move to France: "No." The closest thing Hubbell ever comes to ambition is his proximity to Katie. And even then, he tries to corrupt her into stagnating and giving up, and giving in to society, as he does.She thinks his writing style is absolutely gorgeous. This is a clear reference to her fondness for him, and his own attractiveness. Let this be a lesson to all-- no matter how pretty the words, or the man, it is the action that counts. Without action, there is nothing, and Hubbell has no idea about action, whereas Katie is action, and drive, and spirit, and motivation. Hubbell is stagnation embodied. He is attractive enough, has the "right" friends, the "right" place in society. He has and is nothing. Especially compared to Katie. Without action, there is no potential.So unlike the Hubble telescope is he. He has no perspective, no forward-thinking, and no ambition whatsoever. Katie tried to see in him, but there isn't anything to see.In no way is this a "romance for the ages", but in every way is it a delightful, cautionary tale against giving your life and soul to someone who doesn't deserve it.

It's been many years since I saw 'The Way We Were" I finally found a copy on DVD and watched it again in it's entirety. This is a real film makers movie based on the two most important things in film - script and character. It is very cleverly written. Full of emotion. While the two main characters are totally opposite, they attract each other for some strange reason, which of course does happen in real life. But the reality of real life does intervene and in the end, they realize they just can't continue. It's a bitter sweet ending. The final scene is one of the most well known, poignant scenes in film history. The theme song says it all, "would we, could we." It's a real slice of life, although a little more dramatic than most of us really ever go through. A must for any film buff's collection.

"Memories, Like the corners of my mind Misty water-coloured memories Of the way we were". When I recently sat down to watch "The Way We Were" for the second time (the first having been over ten years ago) I realised that Marvin Hamlisch's famous theme song was about the only thing I could remember about it. Of the film itself I only had misty water-coloured memories of a campus romance between a handsome, blond upper-class WASP boy and a working class girl, a sort of remake of "Love Story" except for the fact that the girl, who is Jewish rather than Italian Catholic (and a lot less attractive than Ali McGraw), doesn't die at the end. The scriptwriter Arthur Laurents in fact wrote the leading male role with Ryan O'Neal, the star of "Love Story", in mind.The film opens in the late 1930s when Katie Morosky and Hubbell Gardiner first meet at university. The two do not seem to have much in common. She is a working-class Jewish Marxist and president of the college branch of the Young Communist League, whereas he is from a wealthy upper-class WASP background. (At least, everyone seems to assume that Hubbell is a WASP, although his Protestantism is never actually mentioned in the film. He could equally well be a White Anglo-Saxon Catholic or White Anglo-Saxon Atheist, but WASC and WASA do not work so well as acronyms). This, however, seems to be one case where opposites attract, and Hubbell and Katie fall in love. They are temporarily separated, but meet again after the war and marry. The film then follows the subsequent history of their marriage. Perhaps the reason so little about the film remains in the memory is because it is a misty water-coloured movie. By that I am not referring to its visual style; the photography is crisp and well-defined. There is, however, something vague and insubstantial about the plot. It doesn't help that both the leads are so unsympathetic. Hubbell is good- looking and charming, but shallow and superficial, unwilling to work hard at anything. When we first meet him he has ambitions to become a writer, and clearly has talent in that direction, but after publishing his first novel never has much success, preferring to work for easy money producing scripts for Hollywood and television. As for Katie, I find it very hard to sympathise with a strident and unapologetic defender of Stalin's regime, even though Laurents obviously intended us to find her sympathetic, politics and all. One of the causes of the growing estrangement between her and Hubbell is his dismissal of her political activism, but this is one area where I felt he showed more sense than she did. The film deals with McCarthyism, but in a classical piece of solipsism fails to acknowledge that the concerns of the House Un-American Activities Committee went much further than a few blacklisted Hollywood directors and screenwriters or that the great majority of McCarthy's victims had absolutely no connection with the motion picture industry. Nor does it explore the irony of Communists like Katie invoking the protection of the American Constitution they were sworn to destroy or ask why, if they were so concerned with freedom of speech, they did not demonstrate outside the Soviet embassy demanding that Stalin extend to his own subjects the freedoms they were claiming for themselves. Another problem with the film is that too much is taken for granted and not enough explained. It purports to be a study of a marriage, but important events in the story of that marriage are rather glossed over, such as Hubbell's affair with the ex-wife of a friend. The final scene shows Hubbell and Katie meeting again in the sixties, and it is clear that they are now divorced (and Katie re-married), but the actual divorce and what led up to it are never shown. We are left to conclude that the differences in their background and temperament have made it impossible for them to live together. (To be fair to Laurents, his original screenplay was very much altered to meet the studio's demands and various other writers were brought in to contribute, which possibly explains the plot's lack of coherence). Robert Redford's rather laid-back style of acting made him a natural choice for a laid-back character like Hubbell. Casting directors from this period often liked to pair Redford with a more intensely dramatic leading lady to emphasise the contrast between their characters. Sydney Pollack, who directs here, had already done this by casting Redford opposite Natalie Wood in "This Property Is Condemned", as had Gene Saks (less successfully) with Jane Fonda in "Barefoot in the Park". (Pollock was later to make the Redford/Fonda pairing work more effectively in "The Electric Horseman"). Certainly Barbra Streisand is at her most intense here, but she is faced with the impossible task of trying to make a Stalinist harridan into a likable human being, and we never really care about what happens to her character. On the positive side, Hamlisch's romantic and poetic musical score is a very fine one and Streisand gives a marvellous rendition of That Song. 6/10. (5/10 for the film itself, with a bonus point for the music; Hamlisch deservedly won Academy Awards for "Best Original Dramatic Score" and "Best Original Song").