The Way We Were (1973)

Katie Morosky is a political firebrand, Hubbell Gardiner is a golden boy who never has to try, and Sydney Pollack follows them from their college days through World War II and into the Hollywood blacklist era. The romance is real, but the film is honest that love does not dissolve a basic disagreement about how to live. Barbra Streisand gives Katie a stubborn, unglamorous conviction, and Robert Redford makes Hubbell's ease look both irresistible and like a flaw. Pick this one if you want an epic that is about two people rather than battle scenes: the history arrives through arguments at the dinner table, and the final meeting outside the Plaza Hotel is earned by everything that came before.