Tuesday, August 28, 2007

The Way We Were

I just saw this movie for the first time ever. I know...where have I been?! How is it that I have never seen this movie? Well, granted, it was released in 1973, three years before I was born. But still!

What a great movie. I don't think I've seen a movie that better portrays the tension between two people who love each other deeply but are so fundamentally different. That last scene...the way Hubble looks at Katie. You know he still loves her so deeply and that he could never love the woman he's with as much as he does Katie. You can see his longing and anguish, that inner conflict between head and heart. But their differences...her passion and extreme conviction, his detached and passive nature...were seemingly too great for their love to endure. Or were they? Could Katie and Hubble have made it?

Of course, Sex and The City fans will immediately recall the final episode of season two, in which Carrie brings up this movie. She is sitting at a bar with the girls on the day of Big's engagment party and she refers to herself as a Katie girl. I love when she approaches Big outside the engagment party afterwards and repeats that famous line from the movie: "your girl is lovely, Hubble." And Big says, "I don't get it," to which Carrie replies, "and you never did."

Clearly Carrie related to the movie and I do too. It made me realize how many people likely go through this: loving someone so deeply but finding the innate differences of character to be too much for that love to sustain. I've long felt that love is the easy part in a relationship but that it cannot support a relationship alone. We bring our individual selves to a relationship and love does not transform who we really are. Hubble and Katie chose to part ways and maybe that is inevitable for two people who are so different. But that love doesn't go away...it is always there. I think Hubble's new woman is safe and easier than Katie but he will never love her deeply.

Ah, the intricacies of love and compatibility.

2 comments:

Ancilla said...

love is always be an interesting topic, isn't it? no matter in what decade or century....

well b, whatever the relationships may gonna be in the future, i do believe that they will help us to be who we are now and in future.

even we will have broken hearts and other behaviors in the following, by the time passed by... i believe (hope) we will be a better one.

and to be loved always a great thing i guess.

B said...

ancilla...yes, love is more than interesting. i too believe that our experiences allow us to be better people. i love the theme of this movie. although it is sad to see these two characters part ways, the movie is really comforting in that it reinforces how loving others often teaches us how to love ourselves better. and going forward, i now realize more fully just how significant that is. and in turn, it makes me excited to love again...to bring that better sense of self to love with someone else.