When Harry Met Sally

If nothing else, this is a public service announcement: “When Harry Met Sally” is available on youtube.

I watched “When Harry Met Sally” for the third time, tonight. The first and second times were before 1992, and definitely way before I was experienced at this romantic thing yet. (In fact the 3rd time I’m not much more experienced than the first 2 times.)

It is the “Seinfeld” of romantic comedies. It’s less the story of Harry and Sally than it is a repository of wisdom on the mating rituals of human beings. Billy Crystal is the hardened, cynical comic and Meg Ryan is the cutesy little girl.

When I watch the movie, I start to realize that it has some kind of architecture to it that I didn’t appreciate when watching it while younger. Both had just endured sad ends to their previous relationships, and were looking to get hitched. They saw the ugly sides of each other, as friends. There were other misadventures, such as the times when they introduced their best friends to each other and set them up on a double date. Instead of hitting it off with each other’s best friends, the 2 best friends got hitched to each other. That was funny. Eventually though, a sympathy fuck leads to a crisis and a resolution. They get hitched up and their friendship becomes a romantic relationship.

Some of the conversations have been classics. I didn’t know that the term “high maintenance” was popularized by this movie. The concept of the “transitional” relation. Most importantly, given the centrality of the platonic relationship between Harry and Sally, the big question – can a man find a woman attractive and still be platonic friends with her?

Very talky romantic movies have reminded me of Rohmer, who is a favourite of mine, as I have watched more than 10 of his movies. This is different from Rohmer, because in Rohmer films everybody is an unreliable narrator. The people in this movie are extremely canny and intelligent, and always speak the truth. The reason why this film is a classic is because there is so much wisdom in these conversations.

A lot of the earlier reviewers missed out on this aspect, rightly criticizing the relationship between Harry and Sally for being artificial and not convincing. Harry and Sally are at their most compelling when they are friends, telling each other stories about their own misadventures at love. There is almost a lifetime’s worth of good lines about romantic relationships. This is not a great movie about a romantic relationship. It is a great movie about people talking about the interesting things that happen during courtship.

In fact, think about the other movies that have been made about romantic relationships by either Nora Ephron or Rob Reiner. “Sleepless in Seattle”, “You Got Mail”

According to wikipedia, the biggest flaw in the movie is that Sally is merely cute and does not have much of a character, other than her obsessive compulsiveness, and her giving extremely exacting instructions when ordering food. The orgasm scene came about when the scriptwriter realized that Harry had been doing most of the talking, and they needed Sally to tell at least one interesting story.

If you were to ask me, I would say that this is really a movie about friendship, not romance. This movie paints romantic relationships in such a bad light that you wonder why people bother at all. The guy just wants to have sex. He doesn’t want to hold the girl in the morning any more than they have to. A man and a woman cannot have a platonic relationship because in the end he wants to have sex. Harry’s pursuit of Sally early in the movie is somewhat distasteful because he’s so upfront about wanting to have sex with her. Sally, when you take away her cuteness, is quite one-dimensional. Women fake orgasms with men. Considering that this movie was written by a woman it’s surprising that the man is the more fleshed-out character in the movie.

What is more touching is the meaningful relationships that friends have with each other, how they talk through their problems. What was happening in the end, when Harry was going to win back Sally? First and foremost, he was trying to salvage a friendship that was placed in great jeopardy by one night of fucking.

Also, movies like these tend to illustrate one great principle: that the best talky romantic movies come from either France or New York City.