When Harry met Sally - the perfect romcom

Given all the critical acclaim that this film has garnered over the decades, it was a surprise to myself when I realised earlier this summer that I hadn't actually seen it.  Given the familiarity everyone has with modern rom-coms and that scene where Meg Ryan's vocal demonstration made a landmark out of a real life New York deli, I think I had decided I didn't need to actually watch When Harry met Sally.  I had probably decided it was the first in a long line of modern rom-coms, in which the conventions have been re-armed and re-used to many times there was nothing to be gained in going back and seeing how it was done in the late 1980s.  I can tell you now reader - I was wrong.

When Harry met Sally charts the growing relationship over several years of the eponymous characters, played with wonderful comic aplomb by Billy Crystal and Meg Ryan.  The film cuts between the years from when they first meet and annoy each other, to years later when the meet and annoy each other again before striking a weird friendship, and then years later still when they wonder if friends can ever really be lovers.  The whole film is barely longer than 90 minutes, but effortlessly charts the emotional and personal journey that each of these characters goes on as they work out in their own way what it is they want from life.  It's a wonderful screenplay that shows us their relationship grow organically, does it efficiently and with heartfelt humour.

The elements of romcom are all there.  Harry and Sally each have a best bud they get to offload their thoughts to as they work out where they need to be.  The funny bits are funny and the emotional bits are - well also funny, but funny in the way you want them to be.  And of course we get the big finish when the guy and the girl realise they do actually after all that want to be together.  And rightly so, and other ending is wrong.

I wonder how many people born after a certain year have actually seen When Harry met Sally.  Billy Crystal and Meg Ryan are actors who's stock fell off dramatically during the mid / late 1990s and so I doubt many born after 1990 have even heard of them.  I was born in the late 1970s and even I had decided I could safely ignore it.  The film works because it is about people realising if they are in love, what that means and what they should do about it.  That's the human condition.  It has been happening for 1000s of years and (with luck) it'll still be happening 1000s of years from now.  Its themes are universal and mean as much today as they did in the 1980s with Meg Ryan's dated hair stylings.  Billy Crystal's concluding monologue says it all.  Watch it and see for yourself if you don't end up with a tear in your eye too.  I dares you.

Molly's Game - Fighting to be treated normally

If there exists one major issue with watching films on planes, it is the fact that the screen is at best something like 8 inches across.  It might be wide screen, and it might be in HD - but it is still only 8 inches.  One of the primary consequences of this is that films emphasising spectacle don't work anywhere near as well as they would on a huge silver screen.  A film needs a story to work on a plane.  A film needs character and heart to work in this format.

Step forward Molly's Game.  Step forward an engaging character study that charts the rise of Molly Bloom, who inveigled herself into the world of high stakes poker games after her dreams of making the Olympic ski jumping team were dashed by injury.  The story is real, and the real life Bloom really did start work as a cocktail waitress before stealing players away from her employer and living the American Dream on her own terms.  She then really did get busted by the authorities who ultimately couldn't find anything she had done wrong, other than be a woman trying to do in American society what men have been doing for decades.

Jessica Chastain looks amazing in an ever-changing procession of expensive cocktail dresses and designer shoes.  I'm very sure that Idris Elba (playing her lawyer) also looks great in his perfectly-turned out suits, but I wasn't really paying attention to that.  She is an actress with extra-ordinary charisma who I hope continues to be cast is roles that require as much.

Ultimately the story is about a woman who just wanted to be given the same opportunities as everyone else, and then be treated the same regardless of if it went right or wrong.  But of course society gets in the way, a society that cannot accept how an attractive well-dressed woman can succeed without somehow being either on the take or sleeping her way to the top.  It's a story that happens every day in our world, a story of a woman having to answer questions, make decisions and take chances that a man would never have to deal with.  With Hollywood having experienced something of a self-reflexive moment recently in the light of the Harvey Weinstein revelations, it is a story that certainly hits a contemporary nerve in the industry.

The only criticism I have of the story is after all Molly's independence and fight to ensure her place in the world on her own terms, her redemption is handed down to her by a courtroom judge - a man.  But then I suppose in doing this the film remains rooted in the real world, a world that remains run by men.  We've come a long way, but there's still a long road ahead.