Last night I watched “The Way We Were” in memory of director Sydney Pollack (who, by the way, grew up in South Bend). I had rented it once in college because I felt I should be familiar with this “classic” and of course didn’t remember anything about it.

Spoiler alert! Spoiler alert! If you don’t want to know anything about the movie, stop reading now. If you don’t care, keep reading.

There’s these two people (Barbra Streisand and a very handsome Robert Redford) in a relationship that just doesn’t work. Time after time they try and they try harder. They even try marriage and moving to a new location. But their love isn’t strong enough to cover their many differences. It’s tragic. At the end of the movie they run into each other years later. And you can see their tender, yet passionate, love for one another is still there. But life has now taken them down different paths. They’re both with other people and moving on with their lives. But you see the unspoken bond between them, knowing it will always be there.

The viewer has to wonder if they were better off together even with their many differences. I also wondered if they would have been better off if they had never gotten together. But then I realized that they both benefited from being together because they both learned from one another. He was influenced by her, and he changed his way of thinking. She too realized a few things thanks to having him in her life, although I think she was a bit more stubborn than he.

It’s a good reminder that we can learn from those who differ from us and what we consider “the norm.” But we have to be willing to learn. If Barbra & Robert’s characters wouldn’t have been open to learn and open to change, it would have been a waste. Think of all the turmoil; that’s all it would have been.

The theme song of the movie plays off and on throughout the 118 minutes, and it’s beautiful and haunting at the same time. Look at these lyrics:

Memories