Several years ago, one of the women I worked with recommended a book called The Notebook by Nicholas Sparks. I'd never heard of it, and it didn't sound like the sort of book that I'd seek out, but she plopped her copy into my hands and said, "Just try it and see what you think." By the time I was about ten pages into The Notebook, I was hooked. I whipped through it over the next several days and found it to be a very moving story, especially in terms of making you reflect on your own life and how things might play out there.
When the film version of The Notebook was being cast, it was considered quite the news story hereabouts that both leads in a big Hollywood adaptation were from southern Ontario, which was then made even more sensational - I guess - when those two young up-and-coming stars began dating in the real world. There's no doubt that Ryan Gosling and Rachel McAdams make an attractive couple, both on and off the silver screen. (Ironically, it was just recently revealed that they've broken up. Tinseltown continues its proud tradition of chewing up and spitting out relationships, it seems.) Each of them has individually carved out nice starts to their careers, and I wouldn't be surprised if they both do well, in the long run. They're certainly both excellent in The Notebook.
The story here is quite simple: boy and girl meet, fall in love, and then are separated by the machinations of her parents before finally meeting up again, nearly a decade later. Meanwhile, in a parallel story, we're shown the couple at the end of their lives, where she's suffering from Alzheimer's and he's trying each day to help her remember their time together by reading to her from a notebook of their pasts. It's the sort of thing that the hard-hearted among us will write off as sentimental claptrap without ever sampling it, but it really doesn't ever fall into that category. For one thing, the scenes set in the past are so full of the heat and vagaries of young love that you can't help but begin to understand why the senior version of Noah would be so willing to spend most of every day trying to earn just a few precious minutes of time with his mostly-lost Allie, there in the retirement home to which her disease has consigned her (and to which he's voluntarily followed her).
As well, there are at least a couple of scenes that wisely play against our expectations and serve to remind us that this isn't a made-for-TV serving of paint-by-numbers writing. In one, Allie's mother shows up just as her daughter has drifted back to Noah in the days leading up to her marriage to another man, and the viewer naturally anticipates further nasty attempts on the older woman's part to control her daughter. Instead, we learn that she, too, had experienced a "summer love" in her youth, had been turned from that path by parental interference, and now at least has gained the perspective to look back and wonder, "What if?" She follows up this surprise by delivering to her daughter the 365 letters from Noah that she'd ensured had never made their way to Allie years earlier, along with providing the space and time for the younger woman to make her own decision.
Similarly, when Allie meets the woman who Noah has half-heartedly taken into his life while pining away for his true love all these years, it could so easily have been written as a cat fight or "bump in the road" for their re-emerging relationship. (If you've ever watched Grey's Anatomy or any of the other on-again/off-again relationship series, then you probably know what I mean!) Instead, McAdams shows her acting range in service to a great script, as Allie warmly greets her supposed-but-not-really rival with compassion and more than a dollop of sympathy, recognizing in the other woman's expression just what her own absence had created for the poor, pitiful creature. More than any other scene in the film, this one made me fall in love with the character of Allie: that she'd react with such maturity, insight and depth, rather than the jealousy and childishness that we generally see displayed in fictional situations of that sort.
The other moment that really stood out for me was actually removed from the film and only showed up on the DVD as a Deleted Scene (but was in the book, I believe). In it, old Noah is told by a nurse in the retirement home about another couple whose story overshadows even his own. This other pair, he's told, saw the man lose his true love to another, with whom she'd gone on to have a family and live out her life, before eventually succumbing to the effects of old age and being "sent away" to the home by those to whom she'd given everything. And that was when her old suitor had shown up again, having waited all that time for her, and began to court her all over again! That tale, along with Allie and Noah's, are the stuff of true love!
It's certainly true that I'm an old softie when it comes to stories like The Notebook, at least when they're done well. And this one's done very well indeed, in my opinion.
Rating: *** 1/2
2 comments:
I'm glad you singled out the scene in which Allie greets Noah's current lover (or whatever you want to call her). That was the scene that made me think of The Notebook as more than just your standard cheesy romantic fare. It's also a scene and an attitude I've kept in mind and aspired to live up to in my own wanderings.
Also, have you seen any of Ryan Gosling's other work? I've just seen Half Nelson and Lars and the Real Girl, but that's been enough for me to consider him in the upper echelon of working actors ... along with Christian Bale, Daniel Day Lewis, etc.
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