Directed by: Robert Mulligan
Starring: Alan Alda, Ellen Burstyn
George and Doris meet by chance at a romantic inn in the early 1950s. Despite each being married to someone else, they go to bed together and agree to meet the same weekend at the same inn for the next twenty plus years. Based on a Bernard Slade play, Same Time, Next Year has no plot. It allows us to grow with these people. We see them change and grow older before our very eyes. They are real and we want to hear what they have to say or how they feel. As the years pass, we see montages of world events that mark the passage of time. Wars happen, Presidents come and go, and the world evolves. Yet, George and Doris are constants.
George and Doris are adulterers, yes, but in some ways they are better people around each other than they are with their spouses. Mostly because there is no deception between them. Ironically, they are most honest with each other. If the wrong actors play George and Doris, the movie will sink. How would we be able to tolerate people we can't stand for two hours? Alan Alda and Ellen Burstyn are the right actors for this movie. They are so enjoyable together that we forgive them their trespasses. Both actors are intelligent, articulate, and really listen to each other. One is not just waiting for the other to stop talking just to deliver a witty one-liner. Over the years, we witness them truly love and care for one another. They even discuss their own marriages and families with genuine honesty.
Their wardrobes and attitudes at times reflect the culture. Doris becomes a hippie while George maintains a suit, tie, and a façade of going along with the establishment. She is against the Vietnam War. George lost a son in the conflict, yet is unable to grieve. He is even angry with Doris for protesting the war. His suit is almost like a suit of armor against the world and his own feelings. He can show anger, but not grief. In probably the most powerful scene in the movie, Doris slowly pokes holes in the armor until George can finally weep for his dead son. A few years later, the tables are turned, with George playing the hippie role and driving Doris nuts with his new age, "let's get in touch with our feelings" lingo.
There is a lot of witty banter and easy familiarity between these two. It is because they are like an old, married couple or they are channeling their inner Neil Simon. It is at times impossible not to be aware of the rigid structure imposed on these two. Huge revelations, such as family deaths or turmoil, are saved for their meetings. This is for the audience's benefit, to be sure, but are we to believe they never, ever communicate with each other outside of their annually rented villa?
That is a minor quibble for a movie that inspires a lot of goodwill. Alda and Burstyn are remarkable. They don't just spout dialogue at each other. They are communicating, conversing, and listening. They are their best selves when they are together for that one weekend a year. I wonder how things would go if they were together for the other fifty-one. In one scene, George, keenly aware of the issues Doris has in her marriage, takes a call from her husband and expounds upon her virtues as a wife and mother. It saves her marriage, although he escapes discovery as her lover by saying he's a priest. "The thought of us being together terrified you," Doris observes. George can't deny this, mostly because Doris is the only person in the world who knows him so well.
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