Barbra Streisand and Robert Redford play star types first and characters second in The Way We Were. This limits the movie as a romance, but makes it fascinating as a study of their onscreen personas. Ostensibly, this is the story of Katie Morosky (Streisand), a politically active American student in the 1930s, and Hubbell Gardiner (Redford), a politically indifferent athlete at the same college. Mutual curiosity during school leads to an affair about a decade later, when they bump into each other in New York City after World War II. That eventually leads to marriage and a stint in Hollywood during the blacklist era. The Way We Were looks and moves like an epic romance, but this is less about Katie and Hubbell as a couple—or the politics that swirl around them—than it is about the dichotomies that the stars embody: intellectual/athlete; Jewish/Wasp; uniquely beautiful/classically handsome; insistent force/casual charm. Narratively, The Way We Were is a dizzy fantasy about how none of these distinctions should matter, then a muddy drama about why they ultimately do. More literally, it’s about Streisand’s assertion of her considerable talent and Redford’s godlike comfort with his own goldenness. Directed by Sydney Pollack (one of seven films he made with Redford), from a script that had a curious collection of hands on it, including Francis Ford Coppola, Paddy Chayefsky, Dalton Trumbo, and original author Arthur Laurents.
(10/8/2025)
