Platitudes

The Way We Were, Sydney Pollack's melodrama starring Barbra Streisand and Robert Redford, is classic 1970s Hollywood: a somewhat geeky schlock-fest involving romantic montages of the couple cooking dinner, frolicking on the beach, lying by a roaring fire, etc. etc. I love how the sex scenes always cutaway to large bodies of water. Robert Redford's character is often shirtless and is named "Hubbell Gardner," reminding me of my prep school classmates called things like "Joth Cabot Thurlow" and "North Blodgett."

The Way We Were is quoted in an episode of "Sex and the City," and it turns out that Sarah Jessica Parker and Barbra Streisand share many critical elements: same push-pull relationship with curly hair, same struggle with their noses, same interest in awkward hats, same cult following in the gay world. In spite of the film's sappy elements, it ended in realism: Hubbell leaves "crazy Katie," and finds a gentler, simpler, more passive, more vanilla kind of a girl, even though they were meant to be together.