“romantic life adapts to all this technology,” says nora ephron,“it’s the way we live, we live this life that’s all about words and we live it in restaurants and we live it on the phone and we live it on the computer.” i’m watching her, tom hanks and meg ryan talk about the making of you got mail and i realize this is why ygm is still one of my favorite romcoms. I’ve always attached great importance to words and their meaning (hello, “affirmation words” love language here!) and here’s a movie, essentially a love letter itself, that highlights their importance and place in our lives. of love and conversations around books like pride & amp; Prejudices about how we communicate with each other (do I convulse when confronted, do I go silent like Meg Ryan? or do I become “Mr. Nasty” like Tom Hanks does?) to how we view when we meet someone in life real doesn’t even scratch the surface of who they really are.
Meg Ryan’s lines describing the anticipation and joy she feels after receiving a great letter is just one of the beautifully written email passages in the film: “I turn on my computer. I wait impatiently while it connects. i connect to the internet and my breath catches in my chest until i hear three little words: “you have mail”. i hear nothing, not even a sound on the streets of new york. just the beating of my own heart. I have mail… from you.”
who would imagine, now, that a movie could be centered on aol? you’ve got mail uses the burgeoning new technology of the “internet” with a capital i, as a device that allows the audience to see both the characters’ rich inner lives and how they conflict with their outward appearances, relationships, and behaviors. the story is timeless, strangers falling in love through letters: first as a hungarian play, then adapted into the classic hollywood movie the corner store, and finally the 90s romantic comedy i love.
what makes having an email such a great fit and an example of pen pals is the anticipation that you’ll only be able to check if you’ve gotten a note from a friend when you get home (virtually or not). While falling in love and talking to strangers over email was a new idea in 1998, it’s not so far off now. Since we carry our emails in our pocket, the opportunity to chat all day if we wish is constantly at our fingertips. dating someone you met online is not as taboo now as it was then.
ephron uses the voiceover of his emails as exposure; their letters to each other allow them to narrate their own love story as it unfolds. Tom Hanks’ character is humanized through his comedic “hot takes” of Starbucks orders that offer a sense of self and late-night dusting outside of H&H muffins. he is rich, he is the son of fox & amp; children and yet does not openly reveal his sensitive side or his inner thoughts to anyone. Hanks always gets the upper hand in the film, which is flawed, since when he first meets Kathleen Kelly, she is unaware that he is the competitor who essentially puts her store in danger of closing.
standing outside the diner, when hanks realizes that ryan is the shop assistant, the woman he’s been writing to and planning to meet… he doesn’t reveal that it’s ny142. This is where Hanks’ character catches up with what viewers have known all along. he realizes that his past cruelty to kathleen kelly and the pain he read in the shop assistant’s description were two sides of the same coin. similarly, he finds out about the coffee shop encounter later, via email, apologizing, saying, “you were expecting to see someone you trusted and instead you met the enemy.”“
The internet plays a daily and, for better or worse, integral role in our lives. During the first few months of the coronavirus lockdown, I found myself reading article after article about young singles getting to know each other online and how maybe that wasn’t such a bad thing after all. Since it’s 2020 and not 1998, we can video chat remotely, but with text and email, the sentiment is the same: we’re forced to get to know each other through written words.
Through mutual writing, both characters can process their emotions about the events of their lives and feel heard and supported by the other. the romantic relationships with which the film begins are superficial and convenient; They lack the emotional intimacy that the freedom to write to a stranger gives Hanks and Ryan. even though they don’t “meet” each other in person, they build a solid foundation before they “officially” meet.
Briefly, we glimpse the possibility of a more instant exchange when they are for the first time. We see them typing back and forth, but we also see them thinking about what they’re saying, editing, and responding to each other’s words. their chemistry clearly has potential.
The hook of the film is its anonymity. Have you already met the love of your life and you don’t know it? as the trailer announces, “in life, they disagree. online, they’re in love.” there is possibility everywhere.
in ephron’s words, you have mail is “a bit of cyberspace, a bit of reality, a bit of magic”. a perfectly wonderful combination, if you ask me.