The Way We Were

 

The Way We Were hit theaters in 1973. I was 17—completely and blissfully naïve about nearly everything. I’d grown up in what felt like a much simpler time, at least through my eyes. I had already seen Barbra Streisand in Funny Girl, and when she sang “Don’t Rain on My Parade,” something shifted. It was an epiphany. That moment changed everything for me. Aside from Rosie O’Donnell, I’m convinced I’m her biggest fan.

 But it was The Way We Were that introduced me to Robert Redford—and with it, my very first celebrity crush.

Watching the film through my seventeen-year-old eyes, I believed their love would last forever. But rewatching it now, with the benefit (and burden) of experience, I see the truth: Katie and Hubbell were never meant to make it. 

They couldn’t stay together because their core values, their view of the world, and what they needed from love were simply too far apart. Their relationship was built on admiration and intense attraction, but it couldn’t bridge the deeper ideological and emotional divides.  In many ways, the world now echoes their relationship—beautiful on the outside, but with deep ideologic divisions. But unlike Katie and Hubbell, I remain hopeful. Though they couldn’t sustain their world together, I believe ours—our democracy—still can.

 Robert Redford is gone and while my seventeen-year-old self, believed in forever, today I understand that some things are meant to be remembered, not sustained. Maybe that’s why The Way We Were still lingers, it captures the ache of what almost was, and the beauty of what couldn’t be.

The seventeen-year-old girl still lives in my heart, and every now and then, she longs to return to The Way We Were—even if only for a brief moment.