The Way We Were

On the AFI’s list of 100 Years … 100 Passions this is #6, behind Casablanca, Gone With the Wind, West Side Story, Roman Holiday, and An Affair to Remember, and just above Doctor Zhivago. I wouldn’t put it that high, myself. I wouldn’t drop it off the list entirely, but for some reason this one never really got to me as well as it got to other people. The chemistry is okay, and Robert Redford is certainly one of the handsomest men who ever lived, so that probably accounts for the female votes. Maybe it’s because I never took to the Streisand character. I have much more in common with her, politically, than I do with Hubbell, but she is so strident, so convinced that she is always right, so intolerant of the opinions of others … I have known people like that, and they are always pains in the ass. Perhaps it’s my innate cynicism that puts me off of someone so committed, but there it is. I just didn’t like her. As Hubbell says at one point, she’s always pushing too hard. The movie is a bit too slow, as well. I could easily have cut ten minutes, just by asking Redford not to pause so long between his lines.