When Harry Met Sally...

Rating: Null/10 (12 November 2012)

The quintessential romantic comedy, When Harry Met Sally lives up to the twofold promise of its genre; it is as genuinely funny as it is romantic. Credit its writer, Nora Ephron, its director, Rob Reiner, and its four leads—Billy Crystal, Meg Ryan, Carrie Fisher, and Bruno Kirby—for the film's steady stream of well-earned laughs. The movie properly centers around well-read, well-bred, well-dressed, well-mannered urbanites who have good looks, good jobs, and good futures. The question of suitability need not consider intelligence, physical attractiveness, or the ability to provide. That leaves compatibility of character to determine who ends up with whom. This keeps the romantic conflict light, which opens a void for the comedy—and possibly some truths about relationships—to fill. Filling that void is where most romantic comedies fall short—leaving them shallow and hollow, and not very funny—and where When Harry Met Sally succeeds. Billy Crystal plays Harry Burns, who "meets" Sally Albright, played by Meg Ryan, multiple times throughout the film. Each time they meet, time has changed them, so it's as if they are meeting each other for the first time. The true first time they meet, Harry is a self-inflicted cynic who always flips to the last page of a book before he reads it so that he'll know how it ends in case he dies before finishing it. His eyes seem perpetually half-closed, and his tone reflects a young man who thinks he knows it all. He plants the seed that germinates into the main thematic question of the film by positing to Sally that men and women can never be friends because "the sex part always gets in the way." Sally is a wide-eyed, prim-and-proper optimist, who admits that she has a positive outlook on life, as if she knows there's something wrong with that. Each time they meet again, their eyes change disposition in opposite directions—his becoming more open as life throws him curveballs, and hers becoming less perky as experience wears down her naivety. Eventually, their eyes meet in the middle, and the third meeting, which takes place roughly ten years after the first, turns Harry and Sally into friends. About a year goes by, and we find the title characters dancing together at a New Year's Eve party. This scene clinches our suspicion that Crystal and Ryan aren't just fine comic performers; they're fine actors. They act this scene with their eyes. Throughout the film, both actors prove their ability to adapt to their characters' changing ages and attitudes. Ryan's performance is chameleonic, her character subtly adjusting to each costume change. This scene also demonstrates the film's exceptional use of music; as Harry and Sally realize what is developing between them, we realize that the song they are dancing to is Harry Connick Jr.'s rendition of "I Could Write A Book," which finds the appropriate lyrics, "how to make two lovers of friends." Still, the couple does not consummate. Time passes. They try to set each other up with their best friends through a double blind date—another scene in which Crystal and Ryan tell the story with their eyes. And we recognize Bruno Kirby and Carrie Fisher as the perfect players of the "other couple." Finally, Harry and Sally have sex, and we learn the real reason why men and women can never remain "just friends." It's not because the man will always want to have sex with the woman; it's because, once they have sex, the woman will attach more meaning to the act than the man. This answer raises another question: when does, or why should, sex mean something, and when does, or why should, it mean everything? The film doesn't really answer this question, but at least it asks it. Instead, it ends in textbook romantic fashion, with Sally standing alone at midnight on another New Year's Eve, and Harry running through the streets to meet her once again, this time forever, as Frank Sinatra serenades them with "It Had To Be You," instrumental variations of which have accompanied moments throughout the movie. We may be tempted to view the final scene as the only unoriginal one, but I like to appreciate it as a dual realization—part Harry's, and part ours—that he, and the movie he lives in, really do, after all, believe in true love.