Spatial Reality in Sleepless in Seattle

In several of the responses to Nora Ephron's Sleepless in Seattle, people have made the observation that the movie seems to lack a complex story or plot.  I agree that this is the case - but only in the narrowest sense of those terms.  It is certainly true that the course of action that the film takes is incredibly basic and straightforward.  The film situates the viewer in a very specific moment in time, immediately following the death of Tom Hanks' wife (which we quickly realize will be the subplot that guides the narrative), and then finishes at an equally decisive point at which some of the "conflict" created by that event has been resolved.  It is not difficult to see where the movie is going, or to realize from the beginning that the two characters are going to overcome all the odds and end the film in a felicitous union.  There is not even a particularly forceful moment in which the viewer is forced to consider that an alternate ending may be impending - that the two of them may not meet and find love with one another.  Rather, everything proceeds exactly as it seems that it will, with no twists or turns.  In the strictest sense of things, therefore, there could hardly be a less complicated plot.  What is interesting to consider about this relates to the concept of offscreen space addressed in the Bonitzer article.  In this response, however, I am using the term offscreen space to mean something slightly different than the actual interaction of character and camera, and what is physically seen and unseen in the film.  I'm considering the relationship that Bonitzer discusses, between the viewer and the film, and the way that the overall "verisimilitude" of the plot affects the viewers ability to truly engage in the filmic setting.  Clearly, the actual events do not appear to follow a pattern that we view in daily life.  However, I believe that the overall humanity of the characters' various circumstances enables the viewer to suspend disbelief regarding the specific events and relate to the believability of the human experience.  The film is, if nothing else, an examination of the deeper emotions that go into human relationships, and what is going in people's minds that is not displayed on the surface.  The two main characters have both reached a type of roadblock in their lives and are trying to determine how to move forward, a fact around which a "shallow" plot is conceived, but which is indicative of something far more important going on underneath.  And the story that is concealed underneath the surface of the obvious progression of the plot is anything but shallow.  The viewer need only be a human who has had experience with relationships to understand that something far more important is going on than immediately meets the eye.

Additionally, there have been a number of comments regarding the on-screen chemistry of the two main characters, played by Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan.  I found this particularly interesting to consider in contrast with their later film collaboration in You've Got Mail.  This film, which was also directed by Nora Ephron, can be viewed in some ways as remarkably similar to Sleepless in Seattle.  The course of events is not particularly difficult to determine, and the viewer is once again in the privileged position of knowing the "punchline" before the characters themselves realize it.  This can also be termed an "unrealistic" film without too much difficult - the actual likelihood of two people meeting in cyberspace and then finding that their lives outside of the internet have become intricately linked is infinitesimally small.  However, while the ability to relate to the human experience is what enables the viewer to engage in the filmic scene of Sleepless in Seattle, in You've Got Mail, the viewer cannot help but be completely charmed and convinced by the dazzling chemistry between the two actors.  Their dialogue flows so naturally, and is so convincing, that the viewer is able to once again abandon their preoccupations with "realism" and embrace the world in which these two exist.  The reason that I find this point particularly interesting is that it is clear that Ephron realized that the need for this one-on-one interaction was not essential to carry the plot of Sleepless in Seattle, and might, in fact, have negatively impacted the spatial games she was playing, and the viewers ability to analyze the two characters as humans on their own, rather than simply in terms of their relationship with one another.