Considered one of the all-time romance classics, yet it ironically features a couple that has no hope of making it. So we are hardly breaking new ground here by saying that there is no way these two should end up together. What we can’t understand is how they ever started.

Quirky, self-conscious Katie Morosky meets Hubbell Gardner at college and is publicly offended by but secretly attracted to him. He is everything she isn’t – graceful, confident, waspy to the extreme – the quintessential golden boy. Katie spends her time supporting political causes; Hubbell spends his studying, rowing, and laughing with his friends. Katie is convinced that, like his friends, he is laughing at her expense. But in fact Hubbell is decent, and deep – he’s a writer – and if he doesn’t share her beliefs he does admire her for them. And so she quickly starts to fall for him.

Several years later they meet again; Hubbell is on leave from the Navy and Katie is working at a local radio station. Stranded in the city, Hubbell accepts Katie’s invitation to stay at her place, and the two strike up a friendship, which turns into the unlikeliest of romances. Katie has never gotten over her crush and she does whatever she can to win Hubbell over. Their relationship blossoms in the city and eventually continues on the west coast when Hubbell sells his book and is invited out to Hollywood.

Frankly we just can’t see how these two ever make it as far as they do. If we were Hubbell we would have thrown in the towel after the first cocktail party with his friends. Katie is sulky, resentful, and determined to be angry, and she has an entire bag of chips on her shoulder. She has no friends other than Hubbell, which is telling. She prepares for each of these social gatherings by stockpiling every ounce of rage she possesses and then detonating it once they’ve arrived. She expects to have a bad time and so she does; she expects his friends to dislike her and so they do. Hubbell just wants to be happy and enjoy life; Katie just wants to fight. As Hubbell tells her, “you push too hard. Every damn minute. There’s no time ever to relax and enjoy living.”

Hubbell does in fact end things that night, a decision we applauded. But he is moved by Katie’s despair and rushes back to comfort her, and the two stay together. Is it callous of us to say we found her teary pleas for his affection pathetic and disingenuous? At that point we were just waiting for Cher to storm in, slap Hubbell across the face and yell “Snap out of it!”

We read once that the most successful couples are the same philosophically and opposite emotionally. Katie and Hubbell are on completely different planets not just emotionally but philosophically as well, and if the relationship had continued things would have only gotten worse. Raising children together would have further underlined their differences. There is simply no way they are ever going to live compatibly, and like so many couples they each enter into the relationship loving things about the other person but also expecting them to change. Hubbell wants Katie to be happier; she wants him to be angrier. But as we all know, none of us ever really changes our true nature.

Tagged with: • • • • • • • • • • • • •

Filed under: 0 Reels • Retro Reel

Like this post? Subscribe to my RSS feed and get loads more!