Romantic Comedies are one of those genres that is hard to
get right. Not because they’re inherently difficult to write for, but there
seem to be only two types of people who write romantic comedies, people that
love them, and people that hate them. The people that love them indulge
themselves in the tropes and clichés of the genre, which if they love them then
good for them, but unfortunately that means when they write their own romantic
comedy based on those tropes and clichés, that is all they end up writing. While
the people who hate it, write it with a sense of spitefulness, a need to
rewrite the genre and completely defy expectations while seemingly missing the
whole point of the genre and write something so outside of convention it
becomes unidentifiable. Then you have the rare breed of people who love
romantic comedies but still want to deconstruct the genre to make something
legitimately good, films like (500) Days of Summer, Forgetting Sarah Marshall,
Annie Hall. But, even rarer than that is a film made by people who love
romantic comedies, want to write a romantic comedy, embrace the conventions we
all know and still somehow be not only good, but excellent. That film, is When
Harry Met Sally.
When Harry Met Sally was directed by Rob Reiner and stars
Billy Crystal and Meg Ryan in the titular roles as two people who try and prove
that men and women can just be friends without sex or love ever getting in the
way…they do though, I don’t even think that counts as a spoiler, you knew that
would happen. There are a lot of clichés to the genre that this film likes to
embrace, the two meet and at first don’t get along, a big dilemma happens in
the second act that splits them apart and in the third act the guy has to run
to find her, confess his love and they all live happily ever after. So why does
it work? Well, it’s simple, they have a really good script behind it. The
script was written by Nora Ephron and it’s often said the two main characters
were based on her and Reiner. Ephron being a perfectionist who never let
anything bother her, while Reiner was sarcastic and cynical and let everything
bother him. I think this is an important detail, because usually when you have
a film that is supposedly analysing the interworking’s of men and woman and
their relationships with each other and their own genders, it helps to actually
have people of the two genders be the mindset behind the film. Because of that,
a lot of the conversations feel genuine, and the introspective nature of the
film never comes across as pretentious or as if it’s reaching for something
that isn’t there. In fact, I’m pretty sure there is at least one conversation
in this film that people would look at and nod their head and go “yeah that’s
true”.
Another one of those big typical clichés that this film uses
is the big ‘run and confess your love at the end of the film’ but it’s also
possibly the best use of the cliché I’ve ever seen. Well, okay, the running to
confess your love part could have been cut out, but the speech itself I felt
was earned. For one thing, this is the first time one of them has actually
confessed their feelings for each other, even when they had an awkward sexual
encounter neither of them claimed it was because they were in love with each
other. This is where a lot of films that use this cliché fail, if it’s not the
first time the characters are saying they love each other, why the heck would
it be effective now? This film spent 2 hours developing this relationship and
lets them earn that big dramatic moment. Especially when you take into
consideration the specifics of the speech, it’s pretty much just Harry listing
all the small things he loves about her. “I love that you get cold when it’s 71
degrees out, I love that it takes you an hour and a half to order a sandwich, I
love that you get a little crinkle above your nose when you're looking at me
like I'm nuts.” Because in reality, when you love someone and spend enough time
with them, it is the small things that you notice and fall in love with. True this
wasn’t the first film to point that out, but that doesn’t make it any less poignant,
especially considering we do actually get to see all these small things happen
onscreen.
Which is also to go into probably the most personal I could
get when talking in this series, it’s that the way this film describes love and
more importantly shows love. That’s kinda how I view love. Love is always going
to be hard to define-I mean technically you can define it as a bunch of
chemicals in your brain but whatever-it’s going to be different for every
person, how you fall in love and what you fall in love with is always unique to
you. But for me, and clearly a lot of people otherwise this film wouldn’t be as
successful as it is, love is spending time with someone doing remedial tasks
and not caring because of who you’re doing it with, love is talking to someone
all the way through the night, trying to find whatever topic you can because
you don’t want to say goodbye, love is banter, love is being silly, love is
being comfortable. Or as Harry puts it in the film “I came here tonight because
when you realize you want to spend the rest of your life with somebody, you
want the rest of your life to start as soon as possible.” What’s often regarded
as the best romantic comedies aren’t the ones that show relationships we wish we had, it’s the ones that show
the ones we do have. The ones that
have conversations real people have, the ones that show real problems people
have, the ones that feel so much more genuine and remind us of how we fall in
love in the first place…Alright, enough of that personal mushy shit, let’s get
back to talking about the film.
I feel like I might be focusing a lot on this aspect of the
film because this is truly one of the best scripts out there, everything from
the themes and conversations to just single lines that you can point out and
say “that’s insightful” or “that’s funny”. My personal favourite is Harry’s
rant after running into his ex-wife. It goes from him ranting about a coffee
table to him & Sally having a heated debate over how the two live their
lives and few sex and relationships, with Sally dropping the mic with “That’ll
prove I’m over Joe? If I fuck somebody? Harry you’re gonna have to move to New
Jersey because you’ve slept with everyone in New York and I don’t see you
getting over Helen. I will make love when it is making love, not the way you do
it like you’re out for revenge or something”. And the film is chocked fill with
lines that you don’t catch on the first time round because they pass by so
quickly but when you stop and think about it, they’re actually quite funny observations,
my personal favourite is one Harry makes about “the white guy overbite”. While
granted this isn’t the funniest film ever, it has plenty of memorable lines
that I have been quoting constantly and always have a good chuckle over every
time I revisit the film.
This is also the best I’ve ever seen Billy Crystal and Meg
Ryan, two people who are experts in this field. By that I mean Crystal does a
lot of comedy while Ryan does a lot of romance and being honest, they’re
usually too over the top for my taste. Don’t get me wrong, I’ve liked them in
other things, but I like the fact that in these roles they have to play it a
little bit more grounded and subtle with very little being romanticised or
played up for the sake of a laugh. Minus the famous “I’ll have what she’s
having scene” which honestly I never really found all that funny apart from the
zinger at the end and I feel it was kind of an out of character moment for
Sally who is usually quite conservative. But overall the film does play out
much more naturally which makes the characters more likeable and identifiable for
the audience. Meaning the drama is more dramatic and the comedy is more
comedic. Even some parts that you would swear were romanticized, like the
interviews with the old couples about the unbelievable ways they all met and
fell in love, those are all real stories and that helps to make this film feel
all the more plausible.
So to wrap this up, great actors acting out a truly superb
script with an honest and relatabe look at love, friendship, differences between men
& women and is in my opinion, the greatest romantic comedy ever made.
-Danny
No comments:
Post a Comment