Review of When Harry Met Sally... (1989) by Edith N — 05 Dec 2012

Baby Fish Mouth! Baby Fish Mouth!

Okay, this is about old enough so that I'm comfortable calling it a classic. I don't think anything is going to happen in the next couple of years to make it suddenly forgotten. I'm also inclined to think of it as one of the last of the Great Romantic Comedies. I think the genre has gone kind of downhill in recent years, and I think it's missing a lot of what makes this particular film so good. Once again, that's at least in part because they've missed what really made it fresh and good. Harry (Billy Crystal) and Sally (Meg Ryan) talk about sex, mostly with other people, but they aren't graphic--except that one moment, which is fully clothed and more on which anon--and they are almost never vulgar. They bicker, but they always, except at the beginning, seem to actually like each other anyway. They both complain about Men and Women in the abstract, but they still genuinely like Men and Women.

Harry Burns and Sally Albright meet the first time on the way from the University of Chicago to New York. He hits on her. She rebuffs him. He tells her men and women can't be friends. A few years later, they encounter each other again in an airport. She is dating his friend Joe (Steven Ford), and he's marrying a woman named Helen (Harley Jane Kozak). Policy against men and women being friends is reiterated. A few years even after that, they meet again. She has broken up with Joe, and Helen has left him. They become friends. She tries to set him up with her best friend, Marie (Carrie Fisher), and he tries to set her up with [i]his[/i] best friend, Jess (Bruno Kirby). Marie and Jess, of course, fall in love with each other. Harry and Sally date other people, but neither one seems to be serious about anyone. One night, Sally calls Harry to tell him that Joe is getting married. He comes over right away, as best friends do. Things get a little friendlier than anticipated, and then things go wrong.

I have always believed that it is a lie that men and women can't be friends. I have plenty of male friends. Heck, if you take Rob Reiner's standards, I'm not sure most people have many friends of any kind. His definition of "friend" seems rather like mine for "best friend"--the person you can tell everything to. Someone who you trust with your deepest secrets. Someone who understands all of your most intense feelings. Now, I've [i]had[/i] a male friend or two who met that definition, but I don't think every man or woman is capable of sharing that with someone of the opposite sex. However, I do think that most men and women are capable of a more casual friendship with each other. Yes, you'll often think about sex with them, but so what? As long as you don't act on it or dwell on it, that doesn't matter. We all have thoughts every day that we'd never actually act on, and we go on with our lives nonetheless. Really, we have to in order to survive.

What frustrates me about this movie is that apparently, its R rating comes from Sally's faked orgasm. According to screenwriter Nora Ephron, she saw the movie on an airplane. As is typical of airlines, it played not long after it was in the theatres. (Quite possibly around the time I flew to New York, actually.) This meant that any number of the passengers had seen it already. As is also typical of airlines, they trimmed what they considered offensive content. The entire conversation about faked orgasms was left in; the actual faked orgasm was not. There's hardly any swearing to it. While various characters are implied to be naked in several places, no actual nudity is seen. Sally slaps Harry once, and that's it for violence. However, Sally's sexuality? Not allowed. Obviously, if she's able to convince the people around them, she sounds real. She must know what a real one sounds like, and female orgasms just generally aren't acceptable to the MPAA. They're much more comfortable with male sexuality.

Of course, everyone knows that the best part of the movie is the little old couples sitting on couches, telling the story of how they met. What's perhaps less well known is that they're all based on true stories. Oh, they're not playing themselves; those are all actors. However, they are telling real stories. Rob Reiner came up with the idea when, as a desperate ice breaker, he asked a friend's father how the father and mother had met. The father lit up and told the story we hear at the very beginning of the film, and Rob Reiner knew that this was one thing all happy couples have in common. They all know the story of how they met, and it always makes them happy to share it. I'm not sure I completely agree; I think there are some pretty clueless people out there who can't remember at all. But I do know that some dear friends of mine are hoping to adopt a child, and one of the things in the letter they've written to give to potential birth mothers is the story of how they met.