He Said/She Said: When Harry Met Sally (1989)

2 years ago

He Said/She Said: When Harry Met Sally (1989)

YOU SAY THINGS LIKE THAT, AND YOU MAKE IT IMPOSSIBLE FOR ME TO HATE YOU.

by Erica Ulstrom (aka “SHE”)

So I watched 500 Days of Summer on a flight last week and while this is not a review of that movie (which is also a favorite), it made me think of the general plausibility of friendship between the sexes.

Can men and women just be friends? By the time we landed, I’d decided: Of course they can…if the motivation is pure. Or, alternately, if you’re willing to sacrifice what you’d really love to have in order to have just a little of what you love.

Because really, the issue is, can men and women be purely friends if the arrangement is a concession. If one party of the pair continues to long or hope for more? And how close can they be? Can they laugh at movies, glancing at each other in the blue light of the screen and nodding? Can they have too loud dinners in that cozy new Indian place and long rambling existential conversations at midnight? Can they walk through the city together and be each other’s dates to weddings and tell each other everything…and never become crushed by the disappointing understanding that it is Just This. No More.

While this is often the deal, I don’t necessarily concede to Harry that this truth negates the possibility of a platonic relationship. Maybe it’s more a question of: Should it?

But back to the case in point: Harry and Sally meet young, 1977 at the University of Chicago. United by transportation logistics, both Harry and Sally are headed for New York – Sweet, naive sweep-haired Sally to pursue journalism school. Harry…presumably to pursue willing women.

Within minutes they are arguing about whether Harry is deep because he reads the last page of every book he buys first just in case he dies before finishing it. They debate whether Ingrid Bergman was wrong to leave Humphrey Bogart at the end of Casablanca and whether you could ever experience real passion with a man named Sheldon.

Somewhere in Middle America, Harry tells Sally she’s attractive – “Empirically attractive. I don’t think it’s a matter of opinion” – which incidentally, fellas, is a terrific thing to tell a woman if you mean it. And Sally decides Harry is hitting on her despite the fact that he’s dating her friend Amanda. Sally rebuts his attempts and offers the consolation of friendship, which is when he infamously informs her that men and women cannot just be friends because “the sex thing” always gets in the way. On that dismal note, at the conclusion of their 18 hour road trip, they part as less than friends, bonded by mutual irritation.

Five years later, however, they reconnect on a business flight – Harry spotting Sally and her new boyfriend in goodbye liplock back in those halcyon days when men could drop their lovers right at the gate. Sally is in the levitating glow of a new relationship and Harry is getting married, mostly he claims because he’s tired of the whole routine. Going out, hooking up with a new woman, calculating how long you have to hold her before you’re allowed to just go home. Sally is appropriately horrified though you have to wonder how much bluster Harry is dusting up to cover his true attachment to Helen the Lawyer Who Is Keeping Her Maiden Name….though we don’t learn that until later.

Five more years down the road we are reintroduced to Sally as she and Joe (of the airport makeout) have broken up. Flash to Harry who is describing Helen’s recent request for a divorce. Turns out, she is in love with someone else – left him without warning for an accountant. And we see where ten years have taken Harry – from a boy who kisses his college girlfriend goodbye and is hitting on her friend within minutes to a grown man, a 32 year old political consultant who is capable, fully capable of being broken by a woman.

Each time Sally and Harry meet, those terrific, charged conversations spark up – you know, the incredibly fun conversations you have with friends of the opposite sex or potential mates on that silvery cusp before any intentions are declared, before you’ve even touched. But this time, their banter evolves into more. Into conversations with heft and depth, and far less bravado. With candor and time to meander and develop; The pithy barbs are gone. And finally, they fall into a routine of true friendship.

To me, it is this stage and these conversations that merit friendship (actual friendship) between the sexes. These talks may be the most honest discussions men and women ever have because no game has yet been declared. Each side can admit their most detrimental shortcomings and unrealistic expectations. Can vent their pet peeves about being in a relationship and admit how much they miss a body to sleep next to without worry of sounding overly needy.

These are the truce hours in which the sexes lie down their weapons and ask each other the real questions. The secret summits in which we can admit and question it all. Why don’t men have the balls to say when it isn’t working? To break up like grownups. And why do women analyze everything, choose the worst way to interpret any situation, pick the least appropriate moment to discuss the conclusion (Incidentally, it’s because we can’t not. We simply can’t hold it in. It’s nothing personal.) Why are we jealous? Why are you scared? Why do we expect so much and do you think you’ll ever know when it’s right?

The really interesting thing about the movie, in my opinion, is the individual evolution of Harry and Sally over the years. Really, it took the years to make anything possible. At the start, Harry is still a boy at a carnival, with a junk food bonanza of phone numbers and flirtations and sexual escapades placating his appetite so fully he can’t imagine being hungry for a real meal. Sally is at the other end of the spectrum. So stridently proper and sure of herself, so rigidly certain of what real, sensible romance looks like that she is impervious to the promising distractions of anything short of perfection.

But eventually the people they were in the start – the very stations in life that precluded them from being together – begin to shift and transform.

So tell me you haven’t had this existential debate with yourself: Is love a matter of fate or timing? Once, as an ex boyfriend and I were leaving each other – me to see the world and him to pursue a new career across the country, his father gave him a serious talking to. “You always think of life like a road because you’re young and you don’t have perspective yet. Someday, you’re going to realize that it’s more like a river with dozens of tributaries that branch out for a while and sometimes, wind back into themselves.” His father’s letter rolled on eloquently but the point was this: Every exit passed is not a permanently lost opportunity. Not necessarily. Sometimes, we swerve away from things for which the time is not right. Things we’re not ready to appreciate or invest in fully enough. But if we’re really fortunate, maybe there is a chance that those opportunities can come back to us. Maybe it’s not a matter of just friends….maybe it’s a matter of just friends for now.

So maybe someday when the light is right and you are ready for something serious or I am tired of wandering or we find ourselves somehow in the same city again…things will be different. Maybe someday Just Friends turns in to the foundation for everything that lies beyond that narrow hall. In the meantime, if you’re able, why not stick it out, right? Why not just enjoy the benefits of camaraderie while you gamble on possibility?

Because too often it hurts, of course.

Months and months into a platonic routine, Sally discovers her ex Joe is getting married. Sobbing unattractively, she realizes “it wasn’t that he didn’t want to get married, it was that he didn’t want to marry me.” Which rang in the skulls of women around the world like a glass you can’t unbreak.

Harry obediently arrives to comfort her and eventually, they find themselves in bed together. The next morning Harry, who you know has been pining for Sally forever, runs away. To save face, Sally says it was a mistake. Three awkward weeks go by and Harry gallantly asks when they’re going to “move past this.” They fight and stop talking. In time, Harry calls and calls to apologize and Sally finally picks up. Harry tosses us his sorrys like a tennis serve but still can’t say anything that matters. You watch this scene and you know exactly why Sally gives in and answers the phone. Because part of her still believes in the best heart of Harry. Part of her believes that they belong together, knows that Harry feels the same beneath a thick layer of blubbery cowardice and hopes to God he’s called because he realized that.

He doesn’t say that though. And as a woman probably should when she’s tired of being friends with a man she actually loves, Sally tells him she can’t do this anymore. “I am not your consolation prize, Harry.”

Unlike in the real world, in Nora Ephron’s universe, shortly thereafter, Harry takes a long walk and reviews a montage of their relationship together. Reconsiders every poignant thing Sally ever said to him and eventually runs to tell her he loves her….on New Years Eve. And he doesn’t just confess his love, he lists the specific endearing traits that have convinced him over the years that he can’t live without her. And they rush off to get married three months later because they can’t not be together another minute. Swoon.

It’s a perfect, adorable ending that doesn’t necessarily do us much good. It’s like an outdoors manual that, at the last chapter, shifts gears to teach you how to start a fire and find food on the moon. What am I supposed to do with this?

It’s not that there are no happy endings – of course there are. But it’s just not usually so tidy. When you find yourself in this established and reinforced, “we’re going to be friends” land – despite the fact that one or both of you have feelings you’re compromising – it’s probably for a fairly solid and hard to resolve set of reasons.

Maybe it is a matter of timing. Or maybe, in 98% of these situations, that is the tiny fire we stoke to keep ourselves warm in the waiting.

Can men and women be friends? Of course they can – if the party that loves can find a way to be content with liking, despite the hundreds of interactions that are going to remind you of everything you are sacrificing.

Maybe you can do it if you’re content holding up plans for a skyscraper next to the bungalow you find yourself in – and understanding there are worthy things this tiny house of camaraderie brings too.

Maybe if you’re full of grace, you can have friendship. And, if you’re truly patient and one of the lucky 2 percenters, maybe your tributaries come together and you can have it all.

Tough thing is, there are no promises at the mouth of the river.