Bon voyage, Mr Redford.
"I have no regrets, because I’ve done everything I could to the best of my ability.” Robert Redford, 1936-2025
EN-The Way We Were
The film I intend to present today is actually one of the many other lovely masterpieces that have remained in my mind and have been alive, existing and making me think – for years. And writing, talking about, and summarizing why each such film actually belongs to this quasi “subjective canon” is easy and difficult – at the same time.
The film I finally decided on was made in 1973, directed by Sydney Pollack, and titled: The Way We Were.
The question may be asked: why did I choose this work? For me, the answer is self-evident: this is the film that, even after many viewings, still raises the same question in my mind, along with the same cathartic feelings, which the director brilliantly handles from the brilliant premise at the beginning of the film (with a continuous, parallel juxtaposition that almost teaches us how to do it) to the end of the plot. Then, as a resolution, he naturally provides his epilogue, which only makes the dilemma posed at the beginning of the story even more emphatic, more emphatic and immortal; ergo, in his own way, he still provides some kind of solution: instead of a prosaic solution, the amplification of the dilemma. In this way – or precisely because of this – the viewer (in this case, in me) has a pile of “the eternal question”, or a forced situation waiting for an answer: which way of being, behavior is the truer one, the more exclusive one, the more salutary one, which has a stronger right to exist…? (There are arguments, of course – pro and con.) To this day, I have not been able to decide on the answer. That is why I am now talking about this (?) – in this respect almost parabolic – filmmaking.
“In a sense, he was like the country he lived in. He had everything too easily, but at least he was aware of it…” – begins the story’s male protagonist, Hubbell Gardiner, in his highly successful short story from his university days, entitled The American Smile, which perfectly describes himself and his “caste” generation. (As an anticipation, we can indicate that the dilemma already indicated above – in medias res – is fully present.)
As it is evident from the previous lines, we are in America, to be precise, in the America of the 1930s, at Yale University. Here they meet – and in a sense the social contradictions are already perceptibly revealed in the opening scenes – Katie Morosky (Barbra Streisand’s great performance), the rebellious, Russian-born “loud-mouthed Jewish girl from New York”, the young communist sympathizer, an excellent orator, a blind believer in collective truth, and a young woman incapable of social and personal compromise, and Hubbell Gardiner (Robert Redford), a talented writer from a good family, with endless social opportunities, one of Yale’s golden boys and excellent athletes. The social background of both of them and the gaping ideological/principle gap between them naturally determine their university years (despite the almost immediately perceptible mutual sympathy). The beginning of the story is therefore almost typical in this sense: two people with different backgrounds and beliefs met at an inopportune time and place.
However, the continuation is far from ordinary. Years pass after university before the two meet again. By then World War II is in full swing. Katie's character has not changed at all: she fights, protests against the production of the atomic bomb, organizes Soviet-American friendly evenings, works in the military information office and on the radio. Hubbell spent the war years – in a privileged place and manner – in the navy, he is apparently well, he seems balanced. And then they meet again; then a new emotional and personal universe is revealed to both of them – which, for a time, seems whole, even as an illusion…
Before the man, the woman's, who from the perspective of the years and the darkness of the anonymous distance has followed his every step with a kind of infinite faith, is almost the only one who constantly encourages him to write more. And before the woman, the man's, who has been monitoring Katie's person and activities since her university years; and the woman gets to know the world of infinite social possibilities that gives rise to the man's existence, where - by her own admission - she absolutely does not fit in. When the construction of the common world begins, the walls are already cracking; the man knows and sees, the woman does not yet want to know and see, especially not to acknowledge it. The emotional reciprocity found then overrides everything - even the personal and principled self-surrender that can be felt on both sides. Which, of course, can be done - for a while. But then (as later in our story) the consequence explodes more powerful than anything. But not there yet, for now we are only at the illusions and the adaptation that must be attempted. Up to this point, this film is a story of mutual tolerance.
The setting of the new, shared world is Hollywood, where Hubbell arrives as a screenwriter. This is the world of eternal glamour and tennis courts, where the price of success and a privileged lifestyle is: abandonment of principles and servile adaptation. Which is not so easy for Hubbell – with Katie behind him – for a while. It goes on for a while, and Katie tries to adapt for their shared future. Then comes one of the darkest periods in America's recent history, the "witch-hunting" activities of the committee investigating un-American activities, marked by the name of Senator Joseph McCarthy (which is analyzed and presented in a great and unique way in the 2005 black-and-white chamber piece directed by George Clooney, Good Night, and Good Luck.), which Katie can no longer tolerate without saying a word. In a blessed state (despite her husband's opposition), she sets out and goes to Washington to demonstrate: to hold the government accountable for its violation of the law. What almost ends in a bloody scene, her husband is just able to save her and their future child from the destructive flood. At this point (embodied in their heated argument) comes the moment of the collapse of their shared world – and they are both now aware of this; despite the emotional community, the joint universe built on self-surrender and principled differences is only a passing illusion, because it is not built on homogeneous foundations. (And from this a general human behavior can emerge: emotions can rarely override principles, ideologies and social or personal mentality.)
Now, at the end of the story, let's generalize and polarize: “broad road” or “narrow road”? Principles or compromise? How healthy is which, and how much is salutary? Where is the limit? “It’s not the issues and principles that are important, but the person. I want to live, and live well…” – says the male protagonist in the debate, “A person is not a person without principles…” – replies the female protagonist. “We have no rights and freedom of speech, and we never will, because people are afraid. Don’t shout, because it’s useless, nothing will change anyway…” – concludes the debate with the husband. So the woman believes in ideas and change, the man in immutability and prosaic existence. Can weakness and lack of principles be forgiven? According to the man (partly) yes, according to the woman, never. Similarly, as in the story of Romeo and Juliet: the juxtaposition of their polarized, parallel, yet antagonistic existences and destinies based on antagonistic opposites gives the catharsis its timeless, uplifting quality, the awareness of the phenomenon, and at the same time the eternal presence of the dilemma, and the difficulty of providing an answer. We know that man is not a man without principles, but man is also weak, willing to compromise and do unethical things in order to survive in the struggle for existence. The latter is also characteristic of man, and the woman cannot resolve this with her human and feminine nature. In this way, the story – according to the almost obligatory cliché of American films – cannot have a happy ending, it is predictable. The common future of these two, extremely different human characters is only temporarily possible, never definitively. And here is the force majeure: although they have always belonged together…
Then – depicted many years later – the director's epilogue: Katie is living in New York again, continuing what she has always believed in: the fight for a better future for humanity. One day, he accidentally runs into Hubbell, and then the final scene – cathartic – that ensures the immortality and timelessness of the film occurs: the emotional community between the two of them still lives and exists strongly, but the experience is stronger; they know that, along with different principles and behaviors, they can never have a happy, shared future.
The Way We Were
colorful, Hungarian-language, American musical drama, 118 minutes, 1973
director: Sydney Pollack
screenwriter: Arthur Laurents
musician: Marvin Hamlisch
cinematographer: Harry Stradling, Jr..
costume designer: Dorothy Jeakins, Moss Mabry
producer: Ray Stark
scenic designer: Stephen B. Grimes
editor: John F. Burnett
cast(s):
Barbra Streisand (Katie Morosky)
Robert Redford (Hubbell Gardner)
Lois Chiles (Carol Ann)
Patrick O'Neal (George Bissinger)
Viveca Lindfors (Paula Bissinger)
Allyn Ann McLerie (Rhea)
Murray Hamilton (Brooks Carpenter)
(2015)
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