Soundtracking: When Harry Met Sally
Wednesday, December 26, 2018 at 10:30AM by Chris Feil
“It’s very clear / Our love is here to stay...”
When Harry Met Sally is a love story of then and now, both in action and in spirit. As it jettisons us across the years with once tense acquaintances, to then friends, to eventual lovers, the narrative’s timelessness is undercut by contemporary observation of its era. To break up its chapters, we’re given testimonials from long-married couples that intensify the feeling of inevitability that Harry and Sally will finally come together.
But like those delightful couples, also peppered throughout the film is a songbook of romantic standard tunes from Harry Connick Jr, several from the Gershwins. He’s as inextricable from the film as New York City, as pecan pie, as faked orgasms.
Can you imagine a sound as perfectly classic and sophisticated as this for Harry and Sally? Theirs are two separate character stories of life in contemporary Manhattan in the 80s coming together to reflect one about love and sex in that same context, yet it feels as if the film and its love story has always existed, like a sunnier piece of American legend. Similarly, Harry Connick Jr. was a new voice in a familiar genre, but though this film catapulted him to the upper echelon of jazz singers, we remember it as if he has always been there.
This songbook, as specific as the context that they are used, still belong to generations. “Our Love is Here to Stay” could play over a montage of those hilarious couples. “But Not For Me” is every broken heart or lonely soul that has ever existed. Perk your ear to drown out the noise of the traffic and lives being lived, and the hum of New York City falls in tune to “Don’t Get Around Much Anymore”. Most days these songs mean nothing to you, and then one day you’re standing there singing “Surrey With the Fringe on Top” in front of Ira and then they mean everything to you. Songs to mark our life by - breakups, makeups, new beginnings - and yet pull us into a larger narrative of their enduring legacy, just as it happens to Harry and Sally. Their songs are also ours.
And so it’s fitting that New Year’s celebrations figure so prominently in the film, a holiday that draws one of life’s few markers of who we were and who we will become. The film’s emotional peak occurring right at the stroke of midnight is a contrivance you maybe sign up for given the genre, but here it makes for one of the most beautiful uses of “Auld Lang Syne” onscreen.
So this most timeless of all the songs on When Harry Met Sally’s soundtrack comes when this coupling is finally realized, cementing what we know to be onscreen as a romance that was always meant to be - whatever they had to get through together for it to be so. And in this song about shared community, Harry and Sally become part of one: they are now one of the many couples we’ve seen in the film that get to share their story.
Happy New Year!!!
All Soundtracking installments can be found here!
Reader Comments (6)
I was at a party last night and people were quoting this movie incessantly! So nbrilliant timing. I guess it kind of is a christmas/New Years movie.
Perhaps the lone occasion I've loved HCJ
If only modern audiences understood how good Meg is in this,
Such a great film, in a great year.
People fail to appreciate how good a director Reiner was for just a minute. He has made some awful films tho haha.
The pinnacle o American Sweetheart!!
Meg Ryan shld've been nom for an Oscar for this!!
Never notice they have Meg Ryan in Diane Keaton drag.