‘While You Were Sleeping’ Captures the Workaday Magic of Chicago
The Scoop features personal essays on movie-centric topics.
By Vicki Rakowski
There are many things in life we cannot control or manufacture, but one that must be particularly maddening for Hollywood is chemistry. And 1995’s While You Were Sleeping is a prime example of chemistry being in charge of a film’s success.
The two leads, Sandra Bullock and Bill Pullman, seem to be bumbling around each other in a manner that speaks of an authentic crush (crushes: something else magical that simply can’t be faked through movie magic). The supporting characters give off a truthfulness that immediately invites the viewer into their world, setting us on a path of trying to put together the Rubik’s cube of their shared history. And lastly, there is the city of Chicago itself, shown off in all its frigid, wintry glory, full of images very dear to those who know those sights intimately. All of this comes together to create a piece of art that might be fairly forgettable without the magic of just the right ingredients that add up to a greater whole.
From the El to the ER
Sandra Bullock’s solitary Lucy is a Chicago Transit Authority (CTA) worker who “sits in a booth like a veal”, taking commuters’ tokens and dinging them through the turnstiles so they can get where they need to go. She has a crush on a handsome businessman (Peter Callahan, played by Peter Gallagher – kinda cutesy, no?) who goes through her downtown El station every day. They never speak, except on this particular Christmas Day he happens to make eye contact with her and say, “Merry Christmas”. Lucy is tongue-tied as she stares after him, only to see a few punks rough him up as they try to mug him, then push him down onto the tracks. A train is coming, and without much hesitation, she jumps down onto the tracks and rolls him out of the way. She winds up following along in the ambulance to the emergency room where she is accidentally mistaken for his fiancée, and finds herself swept up into the world of the Callahans.
Sandra Bullock and Peter Gallagher in While You Were Sleeping.
In very short order, she learns that Peter’s younger brother, Jack (Bill Pullman), might ultimately be a better match for her. Jack is suspicious of Lucy’s alleged relationship with Peter, even as he comes to admire her more and more, while the rest of the family is so tenderly and wholly accepting of her story that it becomes addictive to the extremely lonely Lucy. As the tension grows between Jack and Lucy, so too does the tenuousness of the lie in which Lucy finds herself caught. Eventually the whole thing unravels in a heartbreakingly quiet way, and stitches itself back together simply and sweetly.
Mustard & Magic
Is this a Christmas movie? Yes. Is this a love story? Yes. Is it a comedy of manners? Just a little bit, yes.
But to me it’s also a Chicago story:
The hot dog cart along the Chicago riverwalk (a pretty feature we take for granted now, but was being renovated in the ‘90s when this film was made, to great advantage), where in one particular moment of frustration Lucy tells the hot dog cart vendor “JUST MUSTARD”, a wink to Chicago’s aversion to ketchup on hot dogs.
The icy slush in front of Lucy’s Chicago-style courtyard apartment building, where she and Jack slip and land hard enough for Jack to split the seat of his pants. (They somehow even get the consistency of the snow right.)
The suburban world of the Callahans, whose beautiful white wooden house sits out in the pretty little village of La Grange, a place so magical and far away from the CTA that Lucy has to take a cab.
Peter Callahan’s condo in the exclusive Lake Point Tower, which gives off Olympic-levels of yuppie-ness.
Lucy’s coworker Celeste’s tidy little brick bungalow, an image so specific to Chicago that I can’t think of anything more transporting.
All of these things are a tribute to a place you can’t recreate in a neighborhood of Vancouver, or on a studio lot. They all come together to represent the magic—the chemistry—of the Chicagoland experience.
The best stories make you feel like you are there. They are free of sterility and rife with authenticity. That’s what makes While You Were Sleeping such a classic Chicago movie for me. The fanciest place we go is Lake Point Tower, or the Callahans’ elegant suburban home. Every other location feels extremely workaday: the entry to Northwestern Hospital, the train platforms, the highly polished token trough of Lucy’s token booth, worn smooth by human hands grabbing up one token at a time.
It’s the love for those sights so specific to Chicago that add to the alchemy of this sweet little film.
Vicki Rakowski is an enthusiastic consumer of all things art and literature, and a library director in the Chicagoland area.