The film ends in a romantic setting that once was a technological marvel, a monument and symbol of the immense power of American modernism. Annie and Sam may live on opposite ends of the country, but everything from the Internet to fax machines to airplanes to old-fashioned postal mail are vital in getting the two to finally meet. Annie first hears a reluctant Sam on the radio, after Jonah calls a psychologist’s radio show to get help for his grief-stricken father. Technology helps us become attracted to strangers (the central thesis in The Social Network), it gives us unprecedented access into their mysterious lives, it heightens our desire for those people. Like Ephron’s You’ve Got Mail, Sleepless in Seattle acknowledges the ineluctable influence of technology in the idealization of love, which can be both positive and negative. When a co-worker asks, “What’s that thing, where everything intersects?,” his response is “the Bermuda triangle.”
Annie believes in, but then is quick to dismiss such signs, though she still ends up taking dramatic steps in order to meet a total stranger she thinks she’s fallen in love with.
Annie isn’t so much looking for signs as she is in denial about wanting to leave her goofy, oblivious boyfriend, Walter (Bill Pullman), which is why she falls victim to the game of kismet. For someone as impressionable as Sam’s eight-year-old son, Jonah (Ross Malinger), finding a new mom worthy of his father’s love isn’t dependent on her mutual appreciation for baseball player Brooks Robinson, but the fact that Annie mentions it in her first letter to Sam is symbolic, a sign of good taste in addition to being an omen. No matter how old, disillusioned, or unhappy these women are in their relationships, they recognize the potential of true love in An Affair to Remember, and want to believe the same fate awaits Annie. Children and women in Sleepless in Seattle are wont to believe in the magic of love, and every female character fawns over An Affair to Remember, the 1957 classic that Sleepless in Seattle is modeled after. Despite the characters’ attempts to be rational, there’s an irresistible urge to give into confirmation bias everything that brings Annie and Sam closer together is deemed either a sign or mere coincidence. The film is concerned with the internalization of social constructs about love, from a lifetime of witnessing portrayals of romance in popular culture, and seeing how those ideas manifest in one’s own real love life. So, too, is the idea that couples are brought together cosmically instead of by random chance.Īre Annie and Sam meant to be together forever? Sleepless in Seattle is uninterested in that question, though on the surface it certainly appears to be affirming it. Love at first sight (or first listen, or first letter) is a myth. Indeed, the film ends before they can speak more than a handful of lines to one another.
Yet Sleepless in Seattle never tries to hide the fact that the love between Annie and Hanks’s Sam-no matter how destined it appears to be-is imaginary and idealized. “You want to be in love in a movie.” Director Nora Ephron speaks indirectly to her audience in that single line the film, after all, is a Meg Ryan/Tom Hanks vehicle that hews to rom-com tradition. She treks across country on a wildly romantic impulse to meet him.“You don’t want to be in love,” Becky (Rosie O’Donnell) tells an infatuated, conflicted Annie (Meg Ryan) in Sleepless in Seattle. Although Annie's supposed to be driving to her future in-laws' house for the holidays, she knows that she's already fallen in love with Sam and is on the road to destiny. To complicate matters, she's afraid her upcoming marriage promises stability and security but no excitement. Recently betrothed Annie Reed (Meg Ryan) is one of the many listeners touched by Sam's story. His plight profoundly moves the programme's sympathetic female listeners, and thousands of women write in offering to help him 'recover' from his mournful insomnia. When Sam hesitantly takes the phone and discloses the story of his magic-filled marriage, he proves to be a deeply feeling and gentle man. One night his precocious 8-year-old son Jonah calls a late-night radio talk show seeking a cure for his father's despondency. Sam Baldwin (Tom Hanks) is a good father and a successful architect, but also a lonely widower.
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