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.