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.

Philadelphia - 15 years later

I saw the advertising on AMC for the 15-year anniversary of "Philadelphia," that modern-day classic starring Tom Hanks and Denzel Washington, which brought the dark persecution suffered by victims of AIDS into the broad daylight of everybody's lives. It sought to teach the common man, the ignorant man, that AIDS was not an illness anyone could catch, not transmitted through ordinary human contact, and that we should not treat AIDS patients like the lepers of biblical times. It actually did more than that -- it made people face the fact of discrimination against gays, in general, in a way that as far as I know, no other movie had done before. (Please correct me if I'm wrong.)

So I thought I'd watch it again. Interestingly, something has happened to me between 1993 and now. (Something relevant to my take on the film.) I've learned a little bit about the law. I worked in a law school, first, then later worked in several law firms, dated a couple of attorneys, and then worked in a big-city courthouse. I've also done a lot of reading: law reviews, legal history essays. It's an area you might say I'm familiar with. So when I saw this film, which is a courtroom drama by genre, I paid some attention to the presentation of the case. I became less interested in the emotional aspects of a dying man's fight against discrimination. In this context, it's a totally different movie.

If you look at it for what it was meant to be (see first paragraph) it has a big emotional impact. For sure. Here's Denzel Washington, shaking a man's hand and then stepping ten feet back after he learns that the man has AIDS. Here's Tom Hanks, trying to read in the public library, but they want to put him away in a private room as if he needs to be quarantined.

However, if you begin paying attention to the actual court case, it becomes an infuriatingly bad movie. If you are trying to follow the arguments being made, you see instantly that they don't work. For instance, the defense attorney, in her cross examination, asks Tom Hanks a series of questions about his sexual encounters in a gay movie theater. What's the relevance in a wrongful termination lawsuit? Objection! When an objection is raised she states that her line of questioning goes to credibility. So, I the viewer take this to mean that she is going to prove he's a liar -- isn't that what you would think? That he can't be trusted? His word is no good? Something along those lines? Yet, she never proves nor disproves anything about whether the man is credible. She never even raises that issue! It makes no sense whatsoever. All she's doing is asking him about his sex life. When did he contract AIDS? Was it in a movie theater? Was it when he had sex with a stranger? Yes, yes, yes, he says (he doesn't deny anything). So for the movie's theme, I get it. People are homophobic. People thought homosexuals deserved to get AIDS because of their "lifestyles." It was ugly, ignorant, prejudiced and wrong to think that way. No one deserves to get AIDS.

OK. Does this line of questioning have emotional impact? Yes. Does it even try to sound like a point is being made, in a legal argument? No. He doesn't lie. She doesn't say he lied. She doesn't show that he lied. She doesn't even try to find out whether he lied about anything. The issue isn't even addressed.

Here's an even more glaring problem. Suppose I am not paying attention to the arguments and I'm willing to ignore the fact that neither of the attorneys is making a case. I mean, what if I had never worked in a law firm or courthouse? I'm just the average viewer now, and I don't pay any attention to the arguments. (Although this would be difficult, considering the entire movie takes place in a courtroom.) Minimally, I as the viewer care about what happens to Tom Hanks. Don't you? All my heartstrings are being pulled. Clearly I want him to win the case; I am pulling for him. So -- how bad is it that, when the movie is over and he wins the case, I can't even tell you why or how he won it?!

Usually, in almost every courtroom drama you'll see, there's a moment when the case turns; something is revealed, either in evidence or in testimony that changes the case and turns it around, usually in favor of the protagonist. Anyone, any viewer, even one with no legal knowledge, can point to the moment. It's the drama of the movie, so it's supposed to work. In "Philadelphia," that moment is skipped over. There is no convincing argument made by either side. All we have is one emotional moment after another, followed by the win, which I guess they figured we were expecting -- so it didn't have to be convincing. What a let-down. Way to treat your viewers like children. "Yay! He won the case! We're happy now, because this is what we knew would happen and it takes away the sting of death at the end! Everybody applaud the success!" Give me a break. I want to know, please tell me (now that I've invested all these hours in this courtroom), how did he manage to win it?

Was it because the partners could see lesions on his face? (There's this gut-wrenching scene where Tom Hanks unbuttons his shirt to reveal the prominence of lesions, viewable by the entire jury.) But we knew all along they could see the lesions, so nothing was proven by that display. In the beginning, the point was conceded that his employers saw the lesions but didn't know what they were. So that wasn't a breakthrough in the case. How dumb do you think I am? You think I've already forgotten the first half hour of the movie?

What I expected was that, at some point in the movie, Denzel Washington was going to uncover some proof that the partners knew about the AIDS. They claimed they didn't know; he had to prove they did in order to prove wrongful termination. He never proved that. So, I was very, very disappointed. And even though I can say, as I did in the first paragraph, that this movie did amazing things for society, when it was released in the early 1990s, it truly had impact because it opened our eyes to persecution -- I can admit that, but I can't say it was a good movie. It just didn't really try. That was the saddest part. Many movies include a legal case, and they also have another agenda, and yet they manage with a little effort, to weave together a story that is reasonable as well as emotional. This one didn't even give us the chance to use our brains. It wanted our hearts and that was all it went after. It didn't even try to put the pieces together in a way that made sense. "Who cares if it doesn't make sense? It made you cry, didn't it?" I hate that.

Charlie Wilson's War, The Jane Austen Book Club, My Summer of Love

What do these three movies have in common? The enchanting, daring Emily Blunt. I've become a great admirer of hers. The first time I saw her in a film - which I won't discuss right now - was actually something else, something called "Gideon's Daughter." That was beautiful, too, but I've decided that in this blog I'm going to write reactions to movies I've just seen. I won't start writing about all the movies I've seen in the past. It would be fun, but then I'd never get anything else done.

So let's talk about these three. In "Charlie Wilson's War," Emily Blunt has a very small appearance, but it's crucial. It happens so fast you almost don't realize it's happening. We've just barely been introduced to the character of Charlie Wilson (Tom Hanks); so far we've seen him in two settings: 1) Las Vegas and 2) his office. In his office we see women with big hair, cleavage and a mysterious efficiency belying their bimbo looks. So we've gotten a quick and dirty impression of who the man is and what he likes and the way he likes it. OK. Then there's a small scene in which Peter Gerety comes in as a Texas preacher demanding a defense for displaying a creche on secular land. He brings along his daughter Jane (Emily Blunt), for no apparent reason. Note she seems quiet, reserved, conservatively dressed - a good Christian girl. And she's just sitting there, waiting patiently while everyone runs around. Cut to the next scene. Jane is now in Charlie's suite, wearing only his shirt, sipping a cocktail. She continues to undress until she's wearing only underwear, and then we see her lounging on the sofa, her perfect long legs extended gracefully before us. She is a vision of seduction. Charlie, however, opts to take the phone call from Joanne Herring (Julia Roberts) instead of paying attention to Jane.

Why this transition in Jane? Why is she in her underwear? How did Charlie seduce the nice Christian girl? How did the nice Christian girl turn out to be so sexy? And why is Charlie not taking advantage of the situation? Why give Emily this short and seemingly meaningless appearance? The phone call has to be really important.

It is. It's the phone call that gets the whole plot moving. Joanne gets Charlie to go to Houston, then she gets him to go to Pakistan, then she gets him to go into Afghanistan, and the rest is history. So think of it! Think of how important this phone call has to be to get the movie rolling. And then, further think how attractive and seductive Emily Blunt has to be, in order to highlight the importance of the phone call - that Charlie should choose to ignore her and stay on the phone.

In "The Jane Austen Book Club," Emily Blunt plays a lonely, snobbish young French teacher named Prudie, unhappily married to a man who doesn't appreciate her. She's the odd woman out in the book club, having been invited on a whim by a stranger, while the other women know each other already. At the outset, Prudie's probably your least favorite of the women in the club, (Maria Bello is probably your favorite), unless you like lonely, prude-y, pale-faced women with dark hair and light eyes. At first we don't sympathize with her plight of being married to an unappreciative husband. (That is a worn-out cliche and the film suffers for it as well as others scattered throughout.) No, the only thing worth noticing about Prudie at the outset of the movie is that she is very pretty in an unopened-flower kind of way.

Then one of her students forms a crush on her, and this blurs her sharp borderlines for a minute, and then her aging-hippie mother shows up with some marijuana and this too, creates a mess in Prudie's life and she begins to be more interesting. At some point in Prudie's gradual mellowing, when she begins talking to the book club members, we find out she has never even been to France. She cries, "A French teacher who has never been to France!" (or something like that). Ah, no wonder she was so upset her hubby wouldn't take her abroad.

I won't tell you how, in a climactic moment, Prudie unfolds, but I will say that it takes a really good actress to achieve the scope of change her character has to come through in a limited number of scenes. (And she's taking turns with Maria Bello and Kathy Baker and Amy Brenneman and others, almost competing with them for attention in a badly-constructed movie.) In an otherwise lame movie, Emily Blunt takes us from uninterested to curious to hooked - and admiring. Once again.

And if you really want an exciting performance from Emily Blunt please see "My Summer of Love," an exceptionally daring film about two British girls who try each other on for size. One is poor and orphaned and being raised by an ex-con-turned-preacher brother. That's Mona (Nathalie Press) whose accent tells us everything we need to know about her. The other girl is Tamsin (Emily Blunt) whose accent is very refined. Tamsin rides in on, literally, a white horse to save Mona from her brother, poverty, and boredom above all. She says in effect, 'Mona, you're a wild one, but come into my mansion and try on some beautiful dresses. Try on my life for a summer. See if you don't come out feeling beautiful.'

Tamsin is a self-described "fantasist" and she sure can weave a tale, whether it's a ghost story or a love story. She does tell Mona these and other stories quite convincingly, sipping red wine and making the viewer feel haunted or bewitched, right along with Mona. There's even one tall tale about Edith Piaf, and her alleged crimes of passion (I will admit, adding the gorgeous French voice belting out "La Foule" in the scene does provide support for Tamsin's spell-casting over Mona). What crime of passion will Mona commit at the end of all this, we wonder.