Carl Bernstein and Nora Ephron were the ultimate US media couple in the seventies.
He was the celebrated Washington Post investigative journalist who, with Bob Woodward, helped unravel Watergate and bring down a presidency. She was the sharp, witty writer who would eventually become one of Hollywood’s most distinctive voices.
Then came the irony. Bernstein, a man famous for uncovering other people’s secrets, had a secret of his own. Ephron discovered his affair while pregnant with their second child.
Years later in 1993 , something extraordinary happened. Nora Ephron made Sleepless in Seattle.
At its heart, the film is almost absurdly simple. A widower in Seattle. A lonely journalist in Baltimore. A radio confession overheard by millions. Two people who have never met, yet somehow begin to feel that they are meant for each other. The audience knows what the characters don’t. They belong together. And that creates the delicious torture of the film.
You keep waiting for Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan to meet. They don’t. Not at the airport. Not on the phone. Not through the countless near-misses.
They finally meet only in the closing moments, on the observation deck of the Empire State Building — after the audience has spent nearly the entire film longing for a meeting that the protagonists themselves cannot quite make happen. The film deliberately draws on An Affair to Remember, whose romantic mythology is woven into its story.
And perhaps that is why Sleepless in Seattle feels more poignant than the average romantic comedy. It is not really about falling in love. It is about longing for the possibility of love. About believing that somewhere, somehow, there may still be a person who will understand you.
I sometimes wonder whether, after what happened with Bernstein, some part of Ephron understood that longing differently. Not necessarily autobiographically. Not as confession. But perhaps emotionally. She had experienced the collapse of a relationship she had believed in. And now she was creating a story in which two people, separated by geography, circumstance and fear, somehow find their way towards each other.
The irony is almost too perfect. Bernstein’s betrayal had given Ephron a story about a marriage ending. Sleepless in Seattle gave the world a story about the possibility of love beginning. Because sometimes the most moving love stories are not about the people who are together. They are about the people who are still searching.
And sometimes, the writer who has known heartbreak is the one who knows exactly how much the audience wants to believe in a happy ending.
In musing……. Shakti Ghosal
P.S. ‘Sleepless in Seattle’ is now playing on Netflix but leaving on 30th September 2026. I watched it last night.
A New Beginning 