| MOVIE/MYTH: Sleepless in Seattle
by Ken Atchity Reprinted from Entertainment Today < Magic is to myth as cream cheese is to bagels. Sleepless in Seattle not only strikes a chord in our deepest psyche, where the need for magic increases in direct proportion to our anxieties and desperation; it also resonates its harmonious themes brilliantly through the variations of obsession leading to good old-fashioned romance. by the end of Nora Ephron's best film to date, if you don't believe in "true love," you're definitely in the tearless minority. The myth of fantasy romance reemerges at a time when the work-driven necessities of today have accentuated loneliness more than ever. underlying Sleepless is the myth motif of the double, that somewhere out there is a person exactly complementary to us. The romantic corollary of this belief is that if you're spending your life with the wrong person, you'll never find Mr. Right. That dating syndrome known as "keeping your options open" is derived from this romantic legend. Why are you keeping them open? In case the perfect person for me comes along I don't want to be with a compromise. But can the perfect other come along twice? This magically real retelling of romance myth begins on Christmas Eve, that season of wishes, promises and dreams. The angelic catalyst (or mythic instigator, like the dark lady at the opening of Beauty and the Beast), recapitulating the role of Venus with a heavy influence form Hera and Demeter, is played against type by a radio talk show psychologist reaching out for the heartsick and needy. When 8-year-old Jonah Baldwin (Good Advice's Ross Malinger) calls in with his Christmas one-item list, the present he wants is not for himself but for his father, Sam (Tom HAnks). He needs a new wife. Annie Reed (Meg Ryan), clear across the country, on the Baltimore-Washington expressway, hears the reluctant Sam at a moment of vulnerability after her mother has subtly and probably unconsciously undermined Annie's belief in her wedding plans. She's marrying hyper-allergic Walter (Bill Pullman), who's only problem is that he's too good to be true. Annie is talking herself into it, as she browses with him though Tiffany's, telling herself she doesn't "need a relationship with surprises." No one can blame her for trying to be realistic in a world where, she has concluded, "romance is dead." Enter Venus' acolytes, the mythic allies: Jonah and his initially-speaking sidekick Jessica (Gaby Hoffman) as latter-day Cupids, and Annie's best friend, Becky (Rosie O'Donnell). Against their machinations, we know that Sam doesn't have a chance (interesting that predictability is so desirable when it works). Sam's grimly realistic attitude toward life and love is slowly but surely identified as selfish - and transformed. And, once the rules are clearly established and we're sure this film is going to remain serious about being an unabashed fable, so is the audience transformed. Ephron strips away all but the mythic chassis of the romance vehicle because she wants to hit us straight in the heart, without the middle-class do the right thing exhaustion of Heartburn or the intellectual overlay of When Harry Met Sally (whose director, Rob Reiner, appears affably here in a supporting role). That the Cupids will succeed is not only inevitable, but also exactly what we're rooting for. They are aided by the very structure of the story and by its brilliant interweaving of nostalgic scenes from old movies (in the fashion of Benny and Joon). Life, the film tells us, is scripted one way or the other. The only question is, Whose script are we following? One given to us, one we follow by default, or one closer to the heart's desire? We choose not only the movies we see in the theater, but the ones we watch in our own minds. The references to the classic An Affair to Remember is the storytellers' way of underlining the emotional impact of films on the "war between men and women" of which most of us are either casualties or survivors - and making us realize that the only real winners in this perennial war are those willing to engage in it and to recognize it as the natural underpinning of the human condition. Movies, this story tells us, can serve as crystal balls, but only if we dare to believe in the power of the crystal ball. |