Sleepless in Seattle – the film, the phrase – conjures the kind of quixotic romance that already seems long lost to us, on screen and elsewhere.
Nora Ephron specialized in whimsical courtships – majestic grand gestures, emotionally lofty stakes, couples too perfect for each other for lightning ever to strike so precisely again. As her sophomore directorial venture approaches its 30th year, Sleepless in Seattle remains famously unrivaled in the sheer brilliance of its feat: a love story in which the lovers share roughly 2 minutes of screen time. Ephron’s bold tribute to the cinematic romances of her youth is one deviously elaborate, protracted journey to the “meet-cute”. Fitting then, that our lovers’ tale begins on the road.
Shepherded by the blinding highway lights on a solitary Christmas Eve drive home, Annie Reed (Meg Ryan) chances upon a radio talkshow, just as a little boy, Jonah (Ross Malinger), calls in with a bittersweet Yuletide wish: his mother is dead and his father is sad. He needs a new wife, Jonah resolves matter-of-factly. Eventually, his dad Sam (Tom Hanks) takes the phone and with only a little coaxing, he confesses on the air how profoundly he still mourns his wife (Carey Lowell) who died over a year ago. Sam’s heartfelt elegy kindles the fantasies (and pens) of scores of women listeners, the newly engaged Annie among them. She is plainly unsatisfied in her relationship with the amiable, allergy-plagued Walter (Bill Pullman). For his part, Sam largely ignores the pounds of fan mail and love letters launched in pursuit of his heart; but Jonah clings to Annie’s letter and ultimate proposal: to meet on the top of the Empire State Building on Valentine’s Day.
In a 1993 interview with the Baltimore Sun (for which Annie, winkingly, is a reporter in the film), Ephron revealed that during production she was “obsessed with the word ‘timeless’”. She was the fourth writer recruited to burnish a script (originally written by Jeff Arch) that the studio clearly had little faith in. By then, Ephron was the distinguished, Oscar-nominated screenwriter of Silkwood, Heartburn – adapted from her novel of the same name, a loose portrait of her marriage to the Watergate journalist Carl Bernstein – and the zenith of her oeuvre, When Harry Met Sally. Her directorial debut This is My Life (1992) had been far less successful than these preceding efforts perhaps, but her pen remained unmatched.
Then, what began as a two-week assignment and easy money for Ephron birthed one of the highest grossing films of 1993, an enduring, but almost certain relic of American cinema. For much has been lost in the 30 years since Sleepless in Seattle was first released. Rewatching the film now is to be reminded of the gaping absences that have haunted the American theatrical landscape for well over a decade now: namely, star power and charisma, the kind that films of past eras – certainly romances – so urgently relied upon. In another interview, this time with the American Film Institute, Ephron said: “You know, it was one of those things where the studio sometimes say to you … ‘it just needs character’. When the truth is, all it is is a character piece.”
The film’s lingering impact is hard to overstate. It easily ranks alongside the very film it so expressly devotes itself to: 1957’s An Affair to Remember, which unites the female characters across the film as the apex of romance. Cary Grant and Deborah Kerr appear at intervals to lend their ancestral language, literally (at one point Annie repeats Kerr’s classic line: “All I could say was ‘hello’,”) and generically. The joke is not lost entirely on Rita Wilson, as Sam’s well-meaning if occasionally overbearing friend Suzy, who clumsily attempts to explain the film’s genius. Her husband Greg (Victor Garber), Sam and Jonah all regard her, visibly bemused, as she descends helplessly into tears. Annie, too, watches the film with her editor and close friend Becky (Rosie O’Donnell), who gets one of the film’s most revealing lines. “That’s your problem,” she says to Annie as she herself plops down in front of the television screen, full with Deborah Kerr’s grainy, elegant profile. “You don’t want to be in love; you want to be in love in a movie.”
But it is Becky who ultimately mails Annie’s letter to Sam and Jonah. Annie, meanwhile, is convinced she is trailed by “signs”: a ripped wedding dress, a red heart flashing on the Empire State Building. What may divide the sexes here, is not only the willingness to believe in love’s magic, but to heed it, to act upon its guidance, however unknowable and impractical. Only the boy child possesses the same gumption in pursuit of love.
The film’s final scene on the Empire State Building mirrors the equally beloved reunion of Ephron, Hanks and Ryan in You’ve Got Mail (1998). One character rounds the corner and finally comes to face the subject of their anonymous correspondence. Of course, a new and, indeed, timeless line is born. Sam extends his hand to Annie and says, “Shall we?”
