Credit: Netflix

Not every love story begins with two people meeting, and Sleepless in Seattle is a movie that understands this better than most. The core idea of the film is that small choices that don’t feel important in the moment but later turn out to matter a lot, and that’s the story Nora Ephron has told us in this three-decade-old story.

Let’s walk you through the story in case you have missed every biannual run of this film. Sleepless in Seattle is the story of a man named Sam Baldwin who moves to Seattle with his young son Jonah after losing his wife. Poor Sam is trying to start over without really knowing how to move forward, and you see that in the eyes of Tom Hanks, who played the role.

Hanks has done a phenomenal job in expressing that lived-in sadness without which the role wouldn’t have felt so convincing. It shows up in the way he talks about love as something that changed his life completely and left a space that no one else has been able to fill. Jonah, watching all of this, decides to do something about it and calls a radio talk show on Christmas Eve, hoping someone out there might hear his father’s story and respond to it.

That single call turns into something much bigger than anyone expects when Sam, a little reluctantly, ends up speaking on air about what he had and what he lost. Miles away, Annie Reed (Meg Ryan) hears that conversation while driving home, and even though she is engaged and her life looks settled from the outside, something about Sam’s voice stays with her.

This leads her to write a letter that joins hundreds of others sent by women who were moved by the same story. From that point on, the film builds its connection, letting letters and moments of doubt shape Annie’s decisions while Sam remains literally unaware of her existence.

That uncertainty, that feeling of unsureness, is what Sleepless in Seattle is built upon.

As Annie begins to question her engagement, her curiosity about Sam grows into something more complicated. And no, it’s not because she knows him but because she believes in what she heard. This leads her to make small choices which then later carry more meaning, and this includes a trip to Seattle. There, she sees him from a distance without introducing herself, and in that moment, she is completely unsure of what she is actually looking for.

Meanwhile, Jonah takes matters into his own hands again, writing to Annie and suggesting they meet at the Empire State Building on Valentine’s Day. And if all of this isn’t convincing enough for you to watch this masterpiece, then are you even a romantic?

Meg Ryan, who had already worked with Ephron on “When Harry Met Sally…” and was an easy choice for Annie. And Hanks, do we even need to sing praises? Because that goes without saying.

The screenplay was nominated for an Academy Award, and Sleepless in Seattle became one of the defining romantic dramas of the 1990s.

And if you wonder, what might be your takeaway from this one? It would be that in this era of fast romance, this film ends not with a grand idea about love but with a simple belief that connection does not always begin face-to-face and that sometimes it takes distance and a few uncertain decisions before two people finally arrive at the same place.