He Understood Us

Carrie Courogen remembers the cross-genre brilliance of Rob Reiner’s filmmaking.

By Carrie CourogenDecember 19, 2025

• Film

“I DON’T HAVE a clear-cut film identity,” Rob Reiner told London’s Sunday Telegraph in 1989.

The late actor, writer, and director was on a promotional tour for When Harry Met Sally…, the fifth feature nestled in what would become an eight-year run of all-timers, including This Is Spinal Tap (1984), The Sure Thing (1985), Stand by Me (1986), The Princess Bride (1987), Misery (1990), and A Few Good Men (1992). With a quick, passing glance at his list of credits, it’s easy to take him at his word. Reiner’s films spanned the genre spectrum, from mockumentary to rom-com to thriller to courtroom drama, and his work as a filmmaker was often described as “versatile,” that of a journeyman: reliable, occasionally great, but never executed with the distinct stylistic flair of a true auteur. 

Yet in spite of flash, what Reiner’s vastly differing films all share is the generous and empathetic heart of their director, a deep sense of humanity, and a relentless curiosity about and love of people, in all their imperfections and quirks. It seems a cliché to call a filmmaker’s work personal—what creative work isn’t?—but in Reiner’s case, filmmaking was deeply personal, taking the form not of statements but of questions. Taken all together, they shape the lifelong quest of a man searching for enlightenment on subjects both simple and profound. Can men and women be friends? How much of who we are as adults is shaped by the friendships we had as children? What do artists owe their fans, and what drives fans to obsession? Can love persevere through life’s—and fantasy’s—many unpredictable challenges? Where is the line between obeying authority and questioning it?

It’s no surprise, then, that before cutting his teeth in comedy as a writer on The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour, Reiner, as a college student at UCLA, co-founded an improv group called the Session and later joined another called the Committee. His improvisational background makes itself felt not just in how he worked—capable of pulling triple duty as writer, actor, and director—and the freedom he gave his actors but also in the very foundation of his filmmaking. Improv is all about asking questions. It’s about staying open, curious, and present without judgment. 

When I think about Reiner’s films, I think about them as movies I want to crawl inside and live in. Warm and inviting, like the man who made them. None of the protagonists in Reiner’s films was perfect; it’s likely that, if a few of these films were made today, they’d be quickly written off in social media discourse as “problematic.” Yet it’s their imperfections that make them so undeniably real, and so endearing.

Most poignantly, I find that quality in the final scene of When Harry Met Sally…, the behind-the-scenes story of which went viral in the hours since Reiner’s death. Reiner had met his future wife, Michele Singer, during the film’s production, and because his view of love had shifted, he changed the ending of the movie to reflect that. Harry (Billy Crystal) and Sally (Meg Ryan) are both alone on New Year’s Eve, still on the outs with each other after a disastrous one-night hookup. They’ve both said awful, cruel things to each other, and they’ve both behaved badly. 

“I’ve been doing a lot of thinking, and the thing is, I love you,” Harry tells Sally as he shows up to the party she’s at, breathless from his run across town to get to her. “What?” Sally replies, indignant, telling him off while partygoers gleefully count down behind her.

The content of the big, unabashedly romantic speech gets all the glory—“I love that you get cold when it’s 71 degrees out, I love that it takes you an hour-and-a-half to order a sandwich”—but it’s the way the scene plays that gets me every time. It’s honest. In the hands of a lesser director, the scene could come across as pure sap; when Harry professes his love, Sally would simply melt rather than react the way any sane woman would to someone who thinks it could be that simple. Harry would list the reasons he loves Sally with soft tenderness, rather than yell them with frustration. Reiner understood how people would act in real life, how two people could love each other even if they weren’t quite done hating each other just yet. 

Genius is a label so overused that it threatens to lose its meaning altogether, but it applies in Reiner’s case. Most filmmakers are lucky if they make one truly great film; Reiner made at least six. It is unquestionable that it takes a certain kind of brilliance and virtuosity to be able to accomplish such a feat, let alone across varying tones, genres, and structures. Reiner may not have been showy, but that’s the other thing about genius: he didn’t have to be. His brilliance—his “clear-cut film identity”—was that he understood the power of simply raising the right question. He understood us.