You’ve got mail, but the email is already out of date

There aren’t many new ideas around. Except for those that come from the news. We’ve never agreed with the idea that the real world is more interesting than the cinema, but if things carry on like this, we’ll have to reconsider. The only plot that has been widely acclaimed – and also highly praised by the critics who’ve seen it – is that of the documentary "You Can See Everything" by Nathan Fielder and Lance Oppenheim. It is a story “taken from real life”—known in the press as the Theranos case, a massive fraud against investors—much as the neorealist directors worked with actors “taken from the street”. In figures, the documentary cost $7 million and has grossed $81 million to date.

There aren’t many new ideas about, so remakes are the order of the day. A new ‘You’ve Got Mail’ has been announced, for example. The original, starring Meg Ryan and Tom Hanks and directed by Nora Ephron, is now 28 years old; ‘and it certainly shows its age’, writes Stuart Heritage in The Guardian. He does not even mention the earlier film, directed by Ernst Lubitsch and dating from 1940—which was adapted from the 1937 Hungarian comedy Parfumerie by Miklós László. Lubitsch never ages; it would be a crime even to think such a thing. But Nora Ephron had already replaced ‘postal hold’ with the more contemporary—at the time—email in her film.

Now that our inboxes are crammed full of pointless press releases; that bookshops – both independent boutiques and chain stores – are having to compete for an ever-shrinking market; and that romantic relationships seem to have lost a fair bit of their appeal, the whole affair needs rethinking. Deborah Kaplan and Harry Elfont, who wrote "Lap Year" in 2010, are pondering this. For Italian viewers: "Una proposta per dire sì". Nothing memorable, though. 23 per cent positive reviews on Rotten Tomatoes.

First of all, email must go. It is no longer the new and fascinating tool it was in the 1990s. Switching to Instagram or other social media platforms does not change the situation much. We always leave traces; no one is truly anonymous, like a letter with no sender left at a post box (any doubt that such letters even exist anymore is immediately dispelled by a quick glance at the Italian Post Office’s website).

These days, any email from a stranger – no matter how enticing or flattering the content (for example, an anonymous admirer who doesn’t dare reveal their identity) – would immediately be deemed dangerous, sent to the bin, and then deleted from the bin as well. Only individuals such as Tom Hanks (aged 70) and Meg Ryan (five years his junior) might resist the temptation. Stuart Heritage suggests that they might fall in love whilst both falling victim to an online scam that leaves them penniless. He’d go and see the film, he says. We’re not quite that strapped for cash yet.