How Intimacy in Movie Dialogue Goes a Long Way

I remember many lines Nora Ephron wrote for their elegance and wit, for how aspirational they feel.

“I knew it the very first time I touched her. It was like coming home ... only to no home I’d ever known” is a beautiful way to explain being in love. (“Sleepless in Seattle,” 1993)

“You get born too, a whole part of you that you didn’t know you had, suddenly you have all this love to give, it’s almost as if you expand” is a deeply evocative way to describe motherhood. (“Heartburn,” 1986)

“Above all, be the heroine of your life, not the victim” is a perfect thing to say in a commencement speech at a women’s college. (Wellesley College, 1996)

But there’s one line from “When Harry Met Sally” that I have repeated for the last 15 years because of its perfect banality: “You’re right, you’re right, I know you’re right.”

It’s said by Carrie Fisher, who plays Sally’s best friend, Marie, four times over the course of the film. It becomes a narrative tether, situating us in what has and hasn’t changed in the characters’ lives as we jump ahead by several years. The hairstyles may change as the film bounds through New York in the 1980s, but Marie is still dating a married man, her friends are still telling her he’s never going to leave his wife, and she is still replying, “You’re right, you’re right, I know you’re right.”

The central question of “When Harry Met Sally” is whether (presumably straight) men and women can be friends without sex getting in the way. Beyond that tired conceit, though, the film, which is almost 30 years old, explores what different kinds of intimacy look like. And “you’re right, you’re right, I know you’re right” might be the most intimate line in the film.

Contained within those repeated “you’re rights” is the number of times Marie and her friends have had this well-worn conversation off screen. Each time she says them, Fisher weights these eight words with varying amounts of sadness, resignation, self-awareness and delusion. And Meg Ryan’s Sally is always there to listen to Marie, to commiserate and calmly offer the same advice.

The “I know” is sincere, but there’s a big difference between knowing and doing. The line pops into my head when I know what I should do but I’m enjoying not quite doing it. My brother and I quoted the line to each other as teenagers in a bad New York accent, sibling code for “you’re so annoying, but I’m glad you’re here.” I found myself saying it when, all grown up, friends attempted to counsel me about a flailing relationship.

The line slips perfectly into the sort of circuitous, repetitive conversations that people who care about each other have on a daily basis, but which don’t usually make for great movie dialogue.

The way Ephron conveys this intimacy is especially impressive considering how difficult it is to write compelling rom-com dialogue.

“Four Weddings and a Funeral” is written by Richard Curtis, who practically invented the British rom-com, and yet even he misses the developing-romantic-intimacy mark.

That film builds memorable and wonderful friendships, which is why the funeral scene is so moving. But it’s hard to become invested in the central couple, as they hardly seem to know each other.

In the final scene, having just ditched his fiancee at the altar, Charles (Hugh Grant) announces he knows the woman he loves, and “it’s the person standing opposite me now, in the rain.” That person is Carrie (Andie MacDowell), who responds in a monotone as water streams down her face and sopping hair: “Is it still raining? I hadn’t noticed.”

Water running down your face does not seem like something you fail to register, however blue Grant’s eyes are; it is also a very unsubtle metaphor for the feeling of being struck by love from the heavens.

Clearly, it’s hard to write rom-com dialogue that feels spontaneous and emotion-driven, and if you haven’t established convincing closeness, a romantic crescendo can fall flat.

Because Ephron writes the quiet, day-to-day intimacy of “When Harry Met Sally” so well, the film’s big, cinematic moments work too.

When Harry runs across New York to declare his love for Sally on New Year’s Eve, the setup has the potential to stumble into cliché.

But Ephron centers the couple’s emotional climax in how well they know each other, in the romance of paying attention to the humdrum details of life, and so the moment feels anything but predictable.

“I love that it takes you an hour and a half to order a sandwich,” Harry exclaims to Sally.

The ending works so well partly because Ephron has prioritized building intimacy of various kinds throughout the movie.

And Marie and Sally’s friendship is the foundation of this. We see the women expressing their weaknesses and fears to each other with an ease that sets the tone for and corroborates Harry’s declaration that the magic of love is in the everyday.

And Marie has her own happy ending.

Rom-com best friends often get the smart one-liners, but they rarely get a dramatic narrative arc.

When we met Marie, she carried a Rolodex of datable men, folding down the corner of a card when one gets married. Long before the closing credits, she’s married to a man she really loves and is embracing domesticity.

To get there, she just had to talk it out with people who love her a few dozen times. I buy it.

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.