You've Got Mail

What a refreshing thing it is to watch something as purely moment-defining as "You've Got Mail," which has recently regained popularity in the wake of Nora Ephron's passing. Simply the first few auditory moments of the film make it worthwhile: you get to hear the sound of the old 2600 baud modem dialing, and its tinny whistle and rumble before connecting. The sound reminds me of the emotional excitement I used to feel when connecting to the Internet in the mid-90s. Although I never used AOL and so never had a computer tell me directly "you've got mail," my emotion was the same. I used to get email. Real email, you know, that had nothing to do with my job. It was personal. I was always breathless, waiting for that "connection," and even used to sing along with my modem.

Nostalgia for an earlier Internet time transforms this movie. The plot about the competing bookstores, itself riddled with nostalgia, especially now when even the mega-super-store type bookstores are going under, can't engage our attention as much as the old-fashioned Internet romance. How strange! Now that we are "always on," always connected, and expect our mobile devices to serve as stand-in brains, remembering our schedule and reminding us to go to the grocery store, I think Internet flirtation has gone the way of the card catalog. Needless to say a text message from a boyfriend holds as much satisfaction as the one that reminds you to buy onions.

So: First, the old traditional romance of books and letters disappears via the fiber-optic Internet addiction. Then, email and chat rooms become the source of adrenalin rushes. Then, the Internet becomes a series of shopping networks and advertisements, "always on." Then, our mobile phones replace our memories and reshape the outlines of our every day lives. The Internet is banal! So we're now already ready to wax nostalgic about Internet flirtation? Must be! Makes sense when you think about it. What would Nora Ephron have written next? Has romantic life passed away along with Nora? Was "You've Got Mail" the very last truly romantic film that represented "the now" (the now of the time it was made)? Will every romantic film from now on necessarily be looking backward?


I know that was what I liked about it. Nostalgia for the Internet, as ironic as I find that.

There really isn't much else in "You've Got Mail," unless you happen to enjoy Hanks and Ryan -- I found myself realizing for the first time that, although I've grown up with Hanks ever-present on screen, I'd never really looked at him before. This time I studied his face closely. He's as comfortable as an old bathrobe. There's nothing sexually attractive about him. As for Meg Ryan, well, ditto. Her little half-tilts of her head and hips are so familiar, they have ceased to be cute. And as I said, I don't really buy into the story about the poor little losing bookshop. It doesn't feel real -- not as real as their email exchanges do! I think Nora must have known this, too. If it did feel more real, if we were inclined to resent Hanks as a "big businessman" (yeah right), then the romance wouldn't be pulled off in the end. So you kinda have to subconsciously accept that the bookstore-competition plot is not what the movie's about. It's about the Internet romance, at the time such a hugely shared phenomenon that this movie captures its moment with perfect clarity.