I was sick this past weekend. Our son started playgroup and brought a virus home ten days ago. I got it mid-last week. Then on Monday I had to take off work and stay in bed, which is a big thing when you run your own business. So big, I’ve never done it before. I’ve had Covid three times but carried on working. I’m that guy. But I couldn’t do a thing. It was also my birthday. And the only thing I could do was lie at a specific angle and hope my sinuses didn’t cause me total agony. Then when they did, I’d get up, do that inhale-hot-steam-over-a-bowl thing, moan a little, blow my nose, and get back in bed. Eugh. I repeated this routine about 20 times. I was miserable. I was also insufferable to be around. I know this. I mean, sick men are the worst. If I were my wife, I’d have found an excuse to leave town for a few days. I felt terrible about feeling so terrible. It was that kind of sick day.
While in bed sick on my birthday, I watched three movies. Ghostbusters. When Harry Met Sally. And Sleepless in Seattle. I say “watched” but I had them playing on my laptop while I had my eyes closed and moaned. I’d say things like, “euuuhhhhh” and then swear. But the films were important because they cheered me up while I couldn’t sleep. They distracted me. I wanted New York as a setting and upbeat as a mood. Not my standard need for films. But it is when I’m sick, it seems.
Never mind the first two films. I like those films. They’re fine. But I realized Sleepless in Seattle does not make sense and it bugged me. Meg Ryan’s character Annie stalks Tom Hanks as Sam. She hires a private detective to spy on him. She flies to Seattle to spy on him in person. These are not facts she is going to be able to talk to him about in the future without him saying, “wait, what?” Then he’ll go and seek a restraining order!
The movie’s plot is more Fatal Attraction than Brief Encounter when you think about it. And yet. As a piece of storytelling, Sleepless in Seattle works. I know this because at the end when Annie and Sam meet at the top of the Empire State Building, I cried. Big heaving sobs. And I have not cried in several years. Crying, like taking time off sick, is unusual for me. But the entire two hours leading up to this moment were worth it. It’s possible I was also feeling sorry for myself about being so sick on my birthday and needed an excuse to let it out of my system. I don’t mind. This film delivered. Yes, it did!
The reason Sleepless in Seattle works is it glosses over its minor inconsistencies and plot flaws. Writer Nora Ephron knew her audiences would be willing to suspend their disbelief. They would not get too bothered by the reality that eight-year-old children aren’t allowed to board airplanes alone. The stalking thing, too. Not a problem. Because the over-arching theme of the story holds true. People, when they fall in love, don’t follow sense. They follow their hearts. And the movie is about the two main characters being powerless to avoid the magic of falling in love. It’s that simple. There are amusing moments of comic dialog. The lead characters are trying to figure out if they’re crazy to aspire to experience that magic. Even when their lives are not touched by it in the moment. When they do crazy things for those sane motivations, we can go along with them. Even if there is no way we would entertain such craziness in real life, we do because we’re swept up in the story. We all want to believe that love is magic. It’s the essence of great romantic comedy. Never mind the plot holes, we are prepared to suspend our disbelief in the whole concept of romantic love because we want to believe in it so badly. And the screenplay holds our hand and takes us on that journey, knowingly. It’s remarkable work. It could so easily flop but it doesn’t. It holds up.
What a great sick day it was, in the end, then. I’m doing better today. But now, I miss being so sick because it gave me a reason to watch those movies. Human beings are strange creatures, aren’t we? Meanwhile, I expect normal service to slowly resume over the next few days.
