Day 61: When Harry Met Sally

Two strangers have to spend 18 hours together on the drive to New York and in the process they end up becoming important in each other's lives. After the drive, Harry (Billy Crystal) and Sally (Meg Ryan), both go off and we see them meeting again at various points in their lives. It’s your basic 'they dislike each other, then they’re friends, and somewhere in there they fall in love' film and it is one of my favourites.

The car journey is great, I love that they bicker pretty much the whole time. He is obnoxious, telling her she’s wrong to think certain ways, but it makes her think and so isn’t the worst thing. The main thing is obviously when he tells her men and women can never be friends because the sex aspect always gets in the way. She says she has male friends that she doesn’t want to have sex with but he counters with, ‘they want to have sex with you’. I’ve never believed in this, surely people can just be friends. And is it the same with lesbians? Can they be friends with women and not want to sleep with them? From my experience, yes. What about gay men? It is definitely possible to just be friends with someone of the gender you are usually attracted to without sex getting in the way. But then obviously that’s not what happens in the film and I am glad of it, so who knows.

10 years later they are both going through break-ups and they help each other through them. Meaning that they eventually manage to be friends, and they both seem to get a lot from the relationship. She appears to enjoy his cynicism a lot more now, and he feels comfortable talking to her about what’s going on with him. Their night time phone calls might be just my favourite since it’s so clear they must do it all the time. But there is obviously more to it than just friendship because when she says she is going on a date and he says that it’s great, she is clearly disappointed. He isn’t over his ex-wife though and that’s obviously a barrier to anything happening. Later when they’re both seeing other people, they are clearly jealous of the other. The whole time I’m just shouting at the screen for them to be together because they both like each other, god damn.

When her ex calls her to let her know that he is getting married she is really hurt because the reason they broke up is that he didn’t want to get married. So she takes from it that he wanted to get married, he just didn’t want to marry her. And so she’s upset and she calls Harry, and he comes ‘round to comfort her. But they end up having sex, which they both enjoy but it makes things massively awkward the next morning. He just leaves and she is mortified, and their friendship is almost ruined. The perils of having sex with friends, kids. She eventually tells him that she isn’t going to wait around and be his ‘consolation prize’ and that seems to be the end of it all. He’s an idiot and takes far too long to realise that he loves her but when he does he goes running to the party she is at to tell her. Then we get the speech that everybody knows, and I love it:

“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. I love that after I spend the day with you, I can still smell your perfume on my clothes. And I love that you are the last person I want to talk to before I go to sleep at night. And it’s not because I’m lonely, and it’s not because it’s New Year’s Eve. I came here tonight because when you realise you want to spend the rest of your life with somebody, you want the rest of your life to start as soon as possible.”

10/10