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Is There a Happy Ever After?
Nora Ephron was on my mind all week. I’ve pored through glowing tributes and re-read a few of her essays that gave me so much pleasure. No doubt in her honor, Sleepless in Seattle was on TV last night. Despite being in awe of her enormous talent, I could barely get through the film. In the last scene, when the characters played by Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan finally meet, I’ll admit to welling up. But as the couple walk off into the sunset, uh, I mean elevator, holding hands with eyes locked, I was skeptical about their happy ever after.
Curtains, 2007, Robertas Narkas
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Whew, I’m glad I’m not the only one –
I’m all for the magic of chemistry and all that, but seriously, that particular scene comes straight out of a fairy tale, and is just as believable. They’ve never spoken to each other before and she has STALKED him all the way from Baltimore to Seattle to NYC, and they’re holding hands and looking into each other’s eyes like they’re in love??? It requires too much suspension of disbelief for me.
When Tom Hanks says, “Shall we…” it’s so bad. I’m really glad to hear you say it struck you the same way.
My ability to get caught up in the fantasy and suspend disbelief is a direct function of how much wine/Bourbon I’ve consumed…
I was drinking a vodka martini when I just watched the film, and don’t think it had an impact on suspending my disbelief.
But I could imagine being more susceptible if I’d recently had my heart broken.
awwww…you guys are bringing me down! 🙂 I loved that movie, but I have not watched it in a long, long time….I might feel different now–at my more advanced age…
Juliet, loving that movie puts you in excellent company. That movie was a smash hit, and is considered by many to be a classic. Take pleasure wherever you can find it, even a romantic comedy.
I’ve often found my mood REALLY affects how I feel about romantic comedies. Feeling pretty objective right now, and all I’ll say is that knowing what I know now–that love isn’t a fairy tale, sometimes I watch a movie just to suspend disbelief for a couple of hours. Sometimes I’m not in the mood for a realistic and sad ending.
How did Sleepless in Seattle work for you?
I’m more of a “The Way We Were” kind of girl. Sometimes thing work out, sometimes they don’t. Remember the good, forget the bad, and do what’s right…
speaking of movies….two of my favorites that I love to repeat watch are Holly Hunter, Home for the Holidays, and Beautiful Girls w/ Matt Dillon, and Rosie O’Donnell’s drugstore scene is great.
The stalking comment about SLEEPLESS interested me. What irked me about the Ryan-Hanks companion movie, YOU’VE GOT MAIL, was the power imbalance of the male owner of a chain of big-box bookstores covertly pursuing the female co-proprietor of the small neighborhood bookstore he’s about to overrun. I’ve long thought a sequel could be Ryan getting into amazon.com, overrunning the Hanks company, finding another guy, happily ever after.
Richard, that would’ve been a better ending for You’ve Got Mail, which was a pretty ditzy movie.
@Richard –
I’ve always had a hard time separating “You’ve Got Mail” from the original, “Shop Around the Corner” and the other remake, “In the Good Ol’ Summertime”. I’m actually OK with “You’ve Got Mail”. By the end, she’s started a writing career that his big box store isn’t going to destroy, which kind of makes the power imbalance moot – she was rising from the ashes of the only career she’d ever known (and on some level, one that she might not have even chosen for herself if it had not been handed down to her from her mother).
It’s one of the few remakes that I actually prefer over the original (and it’s light years over and above the first remake, which was only redeemed by the marvelous singing of Judy Garland.) In both the original and the first remake, they reflected the times in which they were made, in that the end resulted in what the audience would only presume is a marriage and a happily ever after…without any sort of presumed independence or self-reliance on the part of the female protagonist.
I’m sure I would have seen it differently if I hadn’t seen its two predecessors before seeing it. Just my $0.02.
Interesting analysis, Stacey. Do you think movies today don’t presume happy ever after?
They still do, but marriage isn’t the only “happily ever after” like it used to be. At the end, I’m not making the assumption that she’s going to give up her writing just because she now has the guy.
I’ve never seen a “happy ever after” in any movie that I’ve believed was gonna happen.
Mainly that’s because a number of rejections have already taken place. My rule of thumb, shaped by watching the experience of others: rejection by either party signals END in big red letters for both.
Said another way:
Never try to be in a relationship with someone who doesn’t want to be in one with you.