An ode to When Harry Met Sally, as the world mourns Rob Reiner

It remains the ultimate realist rom-com.

When Harry Met Sally is something of a blueprint of how to do the rom-com right. Directed by Rob Reiner and written by Nora Ephron, the film is practically all talk and no action – that is, until the very final moments when Billy Crystal's Harry dashes to a New Year's Eve party to give his big declaration of love to Meg Ryan's Sally. “It's not because I'm lonely, and it's not because it's New Year's Eve. I came here tonight because when you realise you want to spend the rest of your life with somebody, you want the rest of your life to start as soon as possible,” he says. The fact that he just misses the countdown to midnight and gives his speech amidst the post-New Year's chaos makes it a perfectly imperfect ending to the film's mundane, but brilliant love story.

The film's enduring appeal – and the enduring appeal of the revolutionarily ordinary enemies-to-friends-to-lovers romance at its core – means that fans flock to the cinemas every year to ring in the New Year by listening to Harry's poorly timed romantic speech just after the clock strikes midnight.

This year, however, the film's uplifting message about the power of love will take on a much sadder tone following the heartbreaking news of the passing of director Rob Reiner and his wife Michele Singer Reiner on December 14. Because Reiner not only served as the film's director – he was also Ephron's inspiration for Harry: jaded, acerbic, bitter, combative, but, also, ultimately, a true romantic. And one of our greatest rom-com heroes to this day.

The film follows Harry and Sally from their first meeting through to their long friendship and, eventually, the beginning of their romantic relationship. After meeting, the pair agree they will keep things platonic – because as Harry warns her, “sex always gets in the way.” Theirs is a connection built on conversation. On disagreements, debates, playful nonsensical bits, witty banter, teasing, laughing, chatting. As such, it remains a rarity in the rom-com world, bold in its commitment to capturing the nuances of a relationship through nothing but talk. You'll find no unbelievable plot devices or magical kismet here. (You can find that kind of love, by the way, in Ephron's Sleepless in Seattle, which also just so happens to feature Reiner as Tom Hanks' friend.)

Reiner, who had recently divorced from his first wife and was rather pessimistic about relationships in general, had approached Ephron with the initial idea. She was hesitant, but in Reiner, she found her inspiration for Harry.

“Rob is a very strange person,” she wrote in the introduction to the script. “He is extremely funny, but he is also extremely depressed – or at least he was at the time; he talked constantly about how depressed he was.”

It's an odd, off-putting, but also an endearing cocktail of traits that Ephron captures to perfection in Harry – Harry who delivers the darkest jokes you've ever heard without batting an eye. Things like, “When I buy a new book, I read the last page first. That way, in case I die before I finish, I know how it ends. That, my friend, is a dark side," or, "They should put the two sections together, real estate and obituaries-- Mr. Klein died today leaving a wife, two children, and a spacious three-bedroom apartment with a wood-burning fireplace."

Ephron and Reiner also capture the embarrassment and absurdity that come with the end of a relationship. The moment when Harry runs into his ex-wife and her new partner while singing a goofy karaoke rendition of “Surrey With the Fringe On Top” from Oklahama! is simultaneously hilarious and skin-crawling.

Borrowing from Reiner's own post-divorce pessimism and depression, the film was originally meant to have a sadder, more cynical ending. But that changed when Rob met Michele. “But I meet Michele and I said, 'Well, I see how this works', and I changed it,” he said during an appearance on Ted Danson's Where Everybody Knows Your Name podcast. "I reshot the ending where you see Billy running and seeing Meg at the New Year's Eve party."

It remains one of the few romantic comedies that defies all schmaltz and fantasy, even in its final moments – and is all the better for it. After losing faith in relationships, Reiner allowed himself to end the film with an optimistic belief that love could still happen – and what nothing could be more romantic than that.