When we think of the rom-com as a genre, one of the things many people love about it is the chemistry and lively banter between the romantic leads. They have a meet-cute, maybe it starts off with immediate interest, other times things are more of a slow burn, but what we unfailingly get is the interaction between these two individuals. Because that’s what we need, isn’t it? We need to see them together so we understand why they end up together by the end of the movie.
This isn’t the case for Sleepless in Seattle, where the romantic leads don’t properly meet until the end of the movie. And yet, director Nora Ephron is able to craft a credible romance, building a solid connection between Sam (Tom Hanks) and Annie (Meg Ryan) when they aren’t even in the same space. That’s magic, if you ask me.
The movie begins on a tragic note: Sam’s wife Maggie has passed away. The first image is of Sam and his son Jonah at Maggie’s gravestone, with Sam comforting his son and trying to reconcile himself with his wife’s death. We’re taken to the moments after her funeral, with Sam’s grief so palpable and present. Even in the next scene, where we see him back at work, it’s made clear that he hasn’t moved on. He reflects that maybe moving might help him get over Maggie’s death, since he’s reminded of her everywhere he goes in Chicago. It reminds me of a Edna St. Vincent Millay poem, where the persona speaks of the pain she feels and “a hundred places where [she] fear[s] to go”, because they “brim” with the memory of her lover.
Ephron establishes all this backstory for Sam first, before we meet Annie. When we first meet to Annie, she’s introducing her fiancé Walter to her family. She seems happy enough, and her family congratulate her wholeheartedly, though there’s a bit of a damper in the air when the conversation swings to all the allergies Walter has to contend with. She doesn’t seem as bothered about it as her father is, especially when he paints an idyllic image of a garden wedding with cold salmon, cucumber salad and strawberries, only to find out that this can’t happen because Walter’s allergic to strawberries.
Later on, when she’s having a private conversation with her mother about how she met Walter, a meet-cute that only happened because of his allergies, her mother is quick to label it fate. Only Annie doesn’t think about it that way. As Annie slips into her grandmother’s wedding dress, the dress her mom has kept all this time, her mom launches into the story of how she met Annie’s father. She tells Annie that the moment she saw their fingers interlaced, she knew that he was the one for her. We see Annie absorbing all this information, but never volunteering anything similar about her and Walter.
Just as the story concludes, the wedding dress rips at the sleeve, and Annie, who doesn’t believe in destiny, calls it a “sign”. This is enough for us to know where she stands with Walter, a relationship where she perceives compatibility but not romantic destiny. They even make this road trip in separate cars, with Annie asserting that it makes sense for her to drive herself, but it also makes us wonder why she isn’t jumping to spend more time with him.
It is in the car ride to Walter’s family home that Annie happens to tune in to Dr Marcia Fieldstone’s radio show. The caller on the line is Jonah, who says he’s worried about his father’s sleepless nights and constant grief. When Sam finds out that Jonah called in to a radio station and aired his situation to millions of people, his reaction says a lot about him as a man and father. While he’s surprised, he doesn’t reprimand Jonah and instead shares openly about his feelings for his late wife. As he describes the magic he felt when their hands first touched, and the certainty he felt in that moment, this resonates with Annie, who had just heard her mom talk about the same thing. There’s longing here, to feel what both this stranger on the air and her mom describes, this moment of magic that fate brings your way.
Even though Sam is technically speaking to Dr Marcia, because we never see the woman and only hear her voice, it feels like he’s speaking to Annie, as the scene moves between his sharing and her reactions to his story. Ephron continues to build these shared spaces between the characters, using match shots to connect their separate storylines together, and at the same time, show us Annie’s growing repentance of having agreed to marry Walter.
In a crazy fit of fantasy, Annie decides to write to Sam and Jonah, and out of the hundreds of letters they get, hers is the one Jonah connects with. Maybe because she addresses the letter to Jonah as well, and sees them as a unit instead of just Sam on his own. The viewer is able to understand Jonah’s growing conviction that Annie would be perfect for his dad, especially when Sam lists Maggie’s apple peeling skills as one of the many things he loved about his late wife, and we saw Annie peeling an apple in one single, curly strip just a scene before.
The thing is, there’s nothing inherently wrong with Walter and Victoria, the woman Sam begins dating midway in the movie. But what Ephron does is emphasize Walter’s allergies – it’s literally the one thing we know about him – and Victoria’s hyena laugh. These characters aren’t developed, merely placeholders till Sam and Annie find their way to each other.
However, when Annie and Sam do meet each other, it isn’t the meeting we hoped for. She steals his breath away at the airport, and she sneaks glances at him and Jonah playing on the beach, before they say hello and share a meaningful look across a busy road.
But that’s it.
We can’t believe that Annie travels all the way to Seattle to meet Sam, and this is all they say to each other. Yet, this is precisely the intention. We’ve had a glimpse of what they could be together, and that’s all we’re thinking about, following each story thread carefully, hoping that fate draws them together again. And we’re not the only ones. Becky and Jonah also play a part in Sam and Annie’s coupling; if Becky hadn’t sent the letter Annie wrote, and Jonah didn’t pluck up the courage to fly by himself to New York, then maybe it wouldn’t have happened.
Or maybe it would have just taken them slightly longer. Annie was always going to end things with Walter, and Sam makes it clear that he’s merely dating Victoria, a very different sentiment from how he describes his first meeting with his late wife. Both Annie and Sam knew that they were settling, and while they are initially okay with it, their desire for the real thing would eventually lead to break-ups.
Our skeptical minds might feel that Sleepless in Seattle is fantasy – no one falls in love at first sight, or just knows they’re meant to be with someone after simply listening to their voice. But in reality, sometimes that’s really all it takes. My very first interaction with my husband was just a photo and a brief introduction he wrote about himself, and I was intrigued. On our second date together, he held my hand, and somehow, I just knew. Maybe it’s as simple as that, or maybe, we’re just all fools in love.
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