“Do you believe that two people can be connected? Like soulmates?” This
is the question that gentle Libby poses to The Teddy Bear Formerly Known
as Hurley in Everybody Loves Hugo, his only centric episode of LOST’s
sixth season. They’ve never met in this intriguing timeline in which
everything seems slightly askew, but Libby can’t shake the feeling that
he is her destiny. Crazy, right? Or could there be something to it?
This was the scene that kept replaying in my mind as I watched Nora Ephron’s Sleepless in Seattle
for the first time in years. With Libby, it’s a glimpse on TV that
sparks the sense of recognition. For Annie Reed (Meg Ryan), the young
woman in the movie, it’s hearing him on the radio. After his precocious
8-year-old son Jonah (Ross Malinger) calls in to a radio show to discuss
the sad state of his dad’s life, recently widowed Sam Baldwin (Tom
Hanks) reluctantly spills his guts to radio psychiatrist Dr. Marcia
Fieldstone (Caroline Aaron).
Annie is not the only woman who
feels an instant connection; hundreds of women write to him after the
show airs, offering to help him dip into the dating scene again. But
Annie is our focus, and we’re meant to believe that her attraction to
him is deeper. That they truly are soulmates. Which would mean, it
seems, that Sam has two, since all indications are that he and his wife
Maggie (Carrie Lowell) shared an idyllic relationship, and now he can
scarcely function without her. Early in the movie, Sam states, “It
doesn’t happen twice.” That’s not to say that a person can’t have two
happy, fulfilling marriages. But if he and Annie were "MFEO" ("made for
each other," one of the annoying acronyms coined by Jonah’s even more
precocious friend Jessica (Gaby Hoffman)), where does that leave Maggie?
That aspect of the movie bothers me a bit. Jonah, like Eddie in The Courtship of Eddie’s Father,
is obsessed with finding a replacement mom. “I’m starting to forget
her,” he sadly confides at one point, but mostly he seems to be okay
with that. He wants to get the show on the road. Sam doesn’t. Sam seems
like a very real, reasonable guy who spends most of the movie in a bit
of a haze. He’s a devoted dad; that’s his one defining characteristic
here. But he still misses his wife terribly and just isn’t sure how to
proceed in her absence.
Sam is the one unwittingly caught up in
this, annoyed by his son’s initial interference and later fixation on a
woman who lives on the opposite coast. Throughout the movie, he is all
practicality – except on the three occasions on which he actually sees
Annie. The first two times, he doesn't know that she is the one who
wrote the letter that so impressed Jonah, but he too feels a sense of
connection. It’s enough to jostle him out of his stupor. But he has no
idea if he will ever see her again.
Ryan brings all of her usual
charm to the role of Annie, though anyone who acted as she does in real
life would be charitably considered erratic. She abuses her privileges
as a journalist to essentially stalk Sam and Jonah “for a story”, flying
all the way out to have a look at them for herself. But when Sam spots
her looking and greets her from across a busy street, she panics and
bolts.
Her obsession with Sam is all the more troubling because
she is engaged. Walter (Bill Pullman) isn’t one of those stereotypical
jerk boyfriends you so often find in movies like this. We’re meant to
find him boring, and clearly there’s a certain zing lacking in their
relationship. But Walter is a seriously nice guy who has done nothing
whatsoever to drive his fiancée into the arms of a strange man. So while
I confess that I do get caught up in the whimsy of this movie and catch
myself feeling all fluttery, I can’t help feeling really sorry for poor
Walter, who, while the woman he loves is dashing off to fulfill a
cinematic fantasy atop the Empire State Building, is having the worst
Valentine’s Day of his life.
And then there’s the fact that this
big moment is preceded by Jonah, with the help of Jessica, securing a
plane ticket to New York and somehow managing to make that journey all
by himself and then spending the day atop the Empire State Building
waiting for Annie to show up, as she proposed in her letter, to which he
responded – except, since he has no idea what she looks like, he has to
ask every woman in sight if she is Annie. It’s a colossally stupid and
dangerous plot.
Four years later, Ryan and Hanks teamed up again for You’ve Got Mail, which was loosely based on the Jimmy Stewart classic Shop Around the Corner
and features another unconventional romance, this time involving
anonymous Internet pals who are falling in love online and don’t realize
that they are rivals in real life. I really like that movie and the
gradual development of the relationship at its heart. While I’m watching
Sleepless in Seattle, I like it too. But when I stop to think it
over, it’s no surprise to me why my dad walked out on it after ten
minutes. “This is so contrived,” he complained. Although I am not immune
to its charms, I can’t disagree.
“It was a million tiny little
things that, when you added them all up, they meant we were supposed to
be together,” Sam tells Dr. Fieldstone when she asks what was so special
about Maggie. A million tiny little things that he doesn’t know about
Annie. Do I believe that two people can be connected? Like soulmates?
Yes. But once the warm fuzzies wear off, I don’t think that Sam and
Annie are quite there.
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