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"The Notebook": Movie Review and Analysis

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Updated: 23 November, 2023

Words: 481 | Page: 1 | 3 min read

Works Cited

• Martz, J. (2017). Online vs. Traditional Learning: What are the Differences?. Arizona Christian University.
• Leaf Group Education. (2021). Online vs. Traditional Education. Classroom.
• University of the Potomac. (2020). Advantages and Disadvantages of Online Classes.
• National Education Association. (2013). NEA Policy Brief: Online and Blended Learning.
• Li, N., Marsh, J. A., & Zheng, B. (2018). Blended learning in K-12: Evidence-based practices and promising approaches. Journal of Educational Research, 111(4), 443-458.
• Allen, I. E., & Seaman, J. (2017). Digital Learning Compass: Distance Education Enrollment Report 2017. Babson Survey Group.
• National Center for Education Statistics. (2021). Enrollment and Employees in Postsecondary Institutions, Fall 2018; and Financial Statistics and Academic Libraries, Fiscal Year 2018: First Look (Provisional Data). U.S. Department of Education.
• Schreurs, J., Jarodzka, H., De Laat, M., & Sloep, P. (2018). The effects of online vs. blended learning on student engagement, learning outcomes, and experience. Educational Technology Research and Development, 66(1), 57-79.
• Means, B., Toyama, Y., Murphy, R., Bakia, M., & Jones, K. (2010). Evaluation of evidence-based practices in online learning: A meta-analysis and review of online learning studies. US Department of Education.
• Sitzmann, T., Kraiger, K., Stewart, D., & Wisher, R. (2006). The comparative effectiveness of web-based and classroom instruction: A meta-analysis. Personnel Psychology, 59(3), 623-664.

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Movie Reviews

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'The Notebook" cuts between the same couple at two seasons in their lives. We see them in the urgency of young romance, and then we see them as old people, she disappearing into the shadows of Alzheimer's, he steadfast in his love. It is his custom every day to read to her from a notebook that tells the story of how they met and fell in love and faced obstacles to their happiness. Sometimes, he says, if only for a few minutes, the clouds part and she is able to remember who he is and who the story is about.

We all wish Alzheimer's could permit such moments. For a time, in the earlier stages of the disease, it does. But when the curtain comes down, there is never another act and the play is over. "The Notebook" is a sentimental fantasy, but such fantasies are not harmful; we tell ourselves stories every day, to make life more bearable. The reason we cried during " Terms of Endearment " was not because the mother was dying, but because she was given the opportunity for a dignified and lucid parting with her children. In life it is more likely to be pain, drugs, regret and despair.

The lovers are named Allie Nelson and Noah Calhoun, known as Duke. As old people they're played by Gena Rowlands and James Garner . As young people, by Rachel McAdams and Ryan Gosling . The performances are suited to the material, respecting the passion at the beginning and the sentiment at the end, but not pushing too hard; there is even a time when young Noah tells Allie, "I don't see how it's gonna work," and means it, and a time when Allie gets engaged to another man.

She's a rich kid, summering at the family's mansion in North Carolina. He's a local kid who works at the sawmill but is smart and poetic. Her parents are snobs. His father ( Sam Shepard ) is centered and supportive. Noah loves her the moment he sees her, and actually hangs by his hands from a bar on a Ferris wheel until she agrees to go out with him. Her parents are direct: "He's trash. He's not for you." One day her mother ( Joan Allen ) shows her a local working man, who looks hard-used by life, and tells Allie that 25 years ago she was in love with him. Allie thinks her parents do not love each other, but her mother insists they do; still, Allen is such a precise actress that she is able to introduce the quietest note of regret into the scene.

The movie is based on a novel by Nicholas Sparks , whose books inspired "Message in a Bottle" (1999), unloved by me, and " A Walk to Remember " (2002), which was so sweet and positive it persuaded me (as did Mandy Moore as its star). Now here is a story that could have been a tearjerker, but -- no, wait, it is a tearjerker, it's just that it's a good one. The director is Nick Cassavetes , son of Gena Rowlands and John Cassavetes , and perhaps his instinctive feeling for his mother helped him find the way past soap opera in the direction of truth.

Ryan Gosling has already been identified as one of the best actors of his generation, although usually in more hard-edged material. Rachel McAdams, who just a few months ago was the bitchy high school queen in " Mean Girls ," here shows such beauty and clarity that we realize once again how actors are blessed by good material. As for Gena Rowlands and James Garner: They are completely at ease in their roles, never striving for effect, never wanting us to be sure we get the message. Garner is an actor so confident and sure that he makes the difficult look easy, and loses credit for his skill. Consider how simply and sincerely he tells their children: "Look, guys, that's my sweetheart in there." Rowlands, best-known for high-strung, even manic characters, especially in films by her late husband, here finds a quiet vulnerability that is luminous.

The photography by Robert Fraisse is striking in its rich, saturated effects, from sea birds at sunset to a dilapidated mansion by candlelight to the texture of Southern summer streets. It makes the story seem more idealized; certainly the retirement home at the end seems more of heaven than of earth.

And the old mansion is underlined, too, first in its decay and then in its rebirth; young Noah is convinced that if he makes good on his promise to rebuild it for Allie, she will come to live in it with him, and paint in the studio he has made for her. ("Noah had gone a little mad," the notebook says.) That she is engaged to marry another shakes him but doesn't discourage him.

We have recently read much about Alzheimer's because of the death of Ronald Reagan. His daughter Patti Davis reported that just before he died, the former president opened his eyes and gazed steadily into those of Nancy, and there was no doubt that he recognized her.

Well, it's nice to think so. Nice to believe the window can open once more before closing forever.

Roger Ebert

Roger Ebert was the film critic of the Chicago Sun-Times from 1967 until his death in 2013. In 1975, he won the Pulitzer Prize for distinguished criticism.

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Brian Tallerico

Film credits.

The Notebook (2004)

Rated PG-13 for some sexuality

123 minutes

Rachel McAdams as Young Allie Nelson

Ryan Gosling as Young Noah Calhoun

Gena Rowlands as Allie Nelson

James Garner as Noah Calhoun

Joan Allen as Allie's Mother

Heather Wahlquist as Sara Tuffington

Nancy De Mayo as Mary Allen Calhoun

Sylvia Jefferies as Rosemary

Directed by

• Nick Cassavetes
• Jeremy Leven

Based on the novel by

• Nicholas Sparks

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The Film “The Notebook”, Movie Review Example

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Exploring Communication and Relationships in the Film “ The Notebook ”

Interpersonal communication is more than just exchanging information between two people. It includes the process of sending and receiving messages that involve creating and interpreting meaning. This can be done verbally, nonverbally, or through a combination of both. The way people communicate with others affects the relationships they have with them. In this paper, I will be discussing how interpersonal communication is portrayed in the film I chose to analyze. In addition, I will be looking at how various theories of interpersonal communication are demonstrated in the film and how they contribute to the development, maintenance, and termination of relationships. The file I chose to analyze is “The Notebook.”

Film Summary

The film “The Notebook” follows the story of two young lovers, Noah and Allie, who are separated by their families due to social conventions and must navigate a long-distance relationship (Cassavetes). Throughout the film, we see various aspects of interpersonal communication between Noah and Allie as they struggle to maintain their relationship despite the many obstacles in their way. We see how they use communication to overcome these obstacles and how it ultimately affects their relationship.

Communication Theories in the Film

Interpersonal communication plays a vital role in the development and maintenance of relationships. In “The Notebook,” we see how various forms of communication are used to start communication, maintain, and terminate communication relationships. The film provides examples of how important communication is in creating and sustaining positive connections with others. Communication is an essential part of every relationship, whether it’s communicating our thoughts and feelings, perceiving others accurately, or using nonverbal cues to express ourselves. The following are some of the concepts portrayed in the film.

Perception is another important aspect of interpersonal communication. In “The Notebook,” we see how perception can affect relationships as Noah and Allie struggle to understand each other’s perspectives. For example, when Noah tries to get together with Allie, he perceives her rejection of his advances as a lack of interest in him and begins to distance himself from her. (Alder 48) However, Allie is interested in Noah but is hesitant to pursue a relationship due to her own personal issues. This misunderstanding between Noah and Allie highlights how perception can affect interpersonal relationships. Another example of this is when Allie is on the phone with Noah and she hangs upon him. In this case, Noah perceives Allie’s actions as a lack of interest in him and their relationship. However, Allie hangs up on Noah because she feels overwhelmed and needs some time to herself. This example shows how two people can have different perceptions of the same situation and how those perceptions can affect their relationships (Alder 52). The way we perceive others affects the way we communicate with them. Noah and Allie’s perception of each other changes as their relationship progresses in the film. When they first meet, they have a negative perception of each other. Noah perceives Allie as a spoiled rich girl out of his league. Allie perceives Noah as a poor, uneducated boy who is beneath her. As they get to know each other better, their perception changes. Noah starts to see Allie as a kind-hearted, caring person. Allie starts to see Noah as a sweet, down-to-earth guy. Their change in perception leads to a change in their communication. They become more open and honest with each other as their relationship develops.

Communication Processes

One of the most important aspects of interpersonal communication is the communication process. This process includes sender, message, channel, receiver, feedback, and context (Alder 29). In the film “The Notebook,” we see various examples of this process in action. For example, when Noah is trying to woo Allie, he sends her a letter expressing his love for her (Cassavetes). The sender, in this case, is Noah, the message is his expression of love, the channel is the letter, the receiver is Allie, feedback is Allie’s reaction to the letter, and the context is their long-distance relationship. Another example of the communication process in action is when Noah and Allie are having a fight, and Allie hangs up on Noah (Cassavetes). In this case, the sender is Allie. The message is her anger and frustration. The channel is the phone call. The receiver is Noah, feedback is Noah’s response to being hung up on, and the context is their tumultuous relationship. Through these examples of the communication process, we can see how interpersonal communication is used in the film.

Models of Communication

In addition to the communication process, communication models can also help us better understand interpersonal relationships. Two of the most commonly discussed communication models are Knapp’s Model of Relationship Development and the Dialectical Model (Alder 210). In “The Notebook,” we see both of these models in action as Noah and Allie work to build their relationship despite the many obstacles that come their way. For example, we see Knapp’s Model of Relationship Development in action when Noah and Allie first meet and start to develop a relationship. We also see the Dialectical Model at play when Noah and Allie try to overcome their differences and maintain their relationship. The Dialectical Model is also evident in the scene where Allie is on the phone with Noah, and she hangs upon him. Through these examples, we can see how interpersonal communication theories can help us understand relationships in “The Notebook.”

Verbal communication

Verbal communication is another important aspect of interpersonal relationships. In “The Notebook,” we see how verbal communication can be used to initiate, maintain, and terminate communication relationships (Alder 262). For example, when Noah and Allie first meet at the carnival, they use verbal communication to initiate their relationship. We also see this in the scene where they are on the phone, and Allie hangs up on Noah. In this case, verbal communication is used to maintain their relationship by helping them to understand each other’s perspectives (Cassavetes). Finally, verbal communication is used to terminate their relationship when Allie breaks up with Noah. These examples show how important verbal communication is in interpersonal relationships.

Interpersonal communication is a key factor in building and maintaining relationships. In “The Notebook,” we see how verbal, nonverbal, and perception can be used to initiate, maintain, and terminate communication relationships. Through examples from the film, we can better understand the role of communication in relationships and its importance for creating positive connections with others. Communication is an essential part of every relationship, whether it’s communicating our thoughts and feelings, perceiving others accurately, or using nonverbal cues to express ourselves.

Works Cited

Adler, Ronald Brian, George R. Rodman, and Athena DuPré.  Essential Communication . Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 2015.

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Sparks Notes, a Critical Analysis of Nicholas Sparks Movies: The Notebook

There are two types of bad media—in particular bad movies—that fascinate me, or at least fascinate me enough for me to want to examine them. The first is the strangely bad. The list of strangely bad movies has been codified, rewritten, and codified again so regularly that me bringing up their titles is probably pointless. Equally pointless at that point is my analysis. My love for The Room is strong enough that my tumblr is named after it, but it’s been picked over so many times that there’s not much left for me to say.

The second kind of bad that fascinates me is stuff that’s bad but is also monstrously successful. There’s this great interview with Werner Herzog where he says that the poet, the musician, the filmmaker, must not avert their eyes from what is popular, no matter how personally distasteful they find it, and that’s advice I’ve taken to heart. I mean, the Transformers film series may be some of the worst movies ever filmed, but they have collectively grossed 3.7 Billion dollars, so I think they merit some analysis.

But that’s not what I’m doing today, because while the Transformers series has grossed 3.7 Billion dollars, it’s done so loudly and in front of everyone. The subject of this article, the movies based on Nicolas Sparks’ books, have quietly managed to gross over 900 million dollars without anyone really noticing or feeling like picking them apart. Since no one else is doing it, I might as well. Thus begins my dissertation on white people kissing in the rain.

I’d originally planned on beginning this series of articles at the chronological beginning, with 1999’s  Message in a Bottle (stay tuned) but as long as I’m here, I might as well open with the movie that brought me to the party, because the impetus to write these articles came a couple months ago, on Valentine’s Day. I was traveling that day and managed to catch the first 10–15 minutes of The Notebook in an airport, and what I saw … kind of weirded me out.

I’ll do a broader plot rundown in a moment, but the movie opens with the main character Noah (Ryan Gosling) briefly running into his love interest, Allie (Rachel McAdams), at a fair. He immediately asks her out, but she refuses, for the very understandable reason that she doesn’t want to go out with him. He then follows her around the fair, waits until she’s on the ferris wheel, charges into her seat (between her and her actual date), and demands that she go out with him.

She refuses again, since he’s an unknown and possibly dangerous person, and the ferris wheel attendant demands he stop endangering all three of their lives by putting more people in a seat than the seat was designed to hold. He begins to climb down, but while hanging there, asks her to go out with him again. When she refuses, he begins to hold on by one hand, and more or less explicitly informs her that if she doesn’t agree, he will let go. Only when she agrees does he resume climbing down. Hm.

Just in case you thought I was kidding.

Hey, fun fact: Threatening to kill yourself to get what you want is textbook abusive behavior.

Before we wander into the actual analysis of the film, let’s discuss a subject that always winds up more controversial than I think it should be: The fact that the media you consume can alter your worldview. I don’t think this should be that much of a hard concept to wrap one’s brain around (I mean, it’s the basis for all advertising), but I think the problem is that when I say one thing, people often hear another, so let’s explore that.

The place this particular subject always comes up is violence, as in, “Can the media you consume make you violent?” and the answer is … well no, but it’s a complicated no. Media can’t alter your behavior that much if you’re not already a violent person. What it can do is change how violent you think the world around you is. If you’re not a violent person, that can make you more dismissive or accepting of the idea of violence, especially as an acceptable response in certain situations. If you’re already a violent person, it can make you think your violent tendencies are more normal, and make you less critical of your violent urges.

So let’s take that principal and apply it to the above. Seeing a lot of media that plays up abusive behavior as romantic (as the many, many, many thinkpieces on 50 Shades and Twilight will attest, there is no shortage of media that presents abusive behavior as romantic) can’t necessarily make you abusive. What it can do is make you less critical of abusive behavior you see in life.

Let’s be clear: No one is saying that Sparks, Twilight author Meyer, or anyone else shouldn’t be allowed to write whatever they want, but being aware and critical of what a piece of media is saying is the best way to keep from being unduly affected by it.

Okay, I am nearly 900 words into this article and I haven’t even begun talking about the movie properly, which really is par for the course with me. So, without further ado, I will begin with my examination of  The Notebook , with what I hope will become the recurring elements of each article, along with a brief introduction on what that segment is. Don’t worry; these long-winded introductions won’t be in every article.

This segment is pretty self-explanatory, just a quick recap of the plot of the movie.

In this case, The Notebook is the inspiring story of two teenagers who take their summer romance way too seriously. Okay, okay, that’s not fair. I’m sorry; it’s not that  bad. I should probably make it clear: I’m not necessarily against romance in film, and I’m not completely immune to sentimentality (I like When Harry Met Sally , Imagine Me & You, hell I’ve been known to defend Love Actually on occasion), but I dislike feeling like a movie is manipulating me, and this movie (and I assume most of Sparks’ oeuvre) is wall-to-wall manipulation.

Initially, the movie seems devoted to an old man (James Garner) reading a book to a woman with dementia (Gena Rowlands), but that’s just a framing device, as the book is devoted to Noah (Ryan Gosling) and Allie (Rachel McAdams), who are two teenagers living in the 1940s. At least, I think they’re both teenagers. They say Allie is 17, but I don’t think they ever specify Noah’s age. I hope he’s 17 or 18, otherwise it just got even weirder.

Anyway, after the aforementioned stalking, they begin dating, but because he’s poor and she’s not, her parents don’t approve, eventually driving them apart. Noah tries sending letters to her—one a day for a whole year, which is a cliché I’ve never been super fond of. I mean, wouldn’t he want her to have a chance to get the letter and write back before he sent the next one? I know mail used to go three times a day, but still.

Anyway, she eventually goes off to college, while he eventually winds up in World War 2, losing a tertiary character along the way. When he gets back, his dad sells his childhood home to help Noah buy a big house he wants to fix up. He finds out that while he was off in Europe, Allie started dating another soldier, who’s rich (and therefore her parents approve) and to whom she has just gotten engaged, causing Noah to go a little nuts.

Allie eventually goes to see him to see if she made a mistake. Of course they reconcile, of course they sleep together, and of course she eventually leaves her fiancé for him. Back in the framing device, it’s revealed that, of course, the old couple are Noah and Allie. They wander around in circles in the framing device for a bit until Noah has a heart attack, Allie another bout of dementia, and then they finally die together in bed. Credits.

Alright, I saw Titanic, too. Jeez.

Sparks famously once said that no one is writing in his genre, apparently unaware that his books are basically Mad Libs of the same plot over and over. So this section will be devoted to the specific answers to those Mad Libs.

The Obstacle:

All Sparks’ movies/books feature a generic obstacle that the romance will overcome. That’s par for the course in romance stories, but that doesn’t automatically excuse Sparks’ stories. In this case, the main obstacle is the fact that Allie’s parents don’t approve of Noah for being poor—not in any, you know, obvious way, but more on that in a second—and I guess the fact that Noah heads off to World War 2.

The Tragedy:

But of course, Sparks isn’t just writing romance novels. He’s writing tragedies … which just makes them generic tearjerkers, but never mind that. In this case, the tragedy is in the framing device (which kind of undercuts it) with Old Allie suffering from alzheimer’s and subsequent dementia.

What frustrates me about both the Obstacle and the Tragedy is how completely uninterested the movie is in exploring either of them. There’s no attempt to look at social or class divides and certainly no attempt to depict them on-screen. Noah lives in a large, two-story house, easily gets the money to purchase a much larger one, and never seems to want for anything. An attempt to show the financial strain Noah is under might have made it land a little stronger—or, you know, at all.

Hell, The Notebook ‘s not even particularly interested in World War II. They say that Noah and his redshirt friend were in Patton’s 3 rd Army, which means they were in the Battle of the Bulge—the largest and bloodiest battle the US was involved in in World War II—but we barely get to see even a scene of it. We just get a couple of quick cuts that wouldn’t pass muster as a establishing shots.

But as much as the class divide and World War II are missed opportunities, the alzheimer’s subplot is an even bigger one. Alzheimer’s is such a horrifying and difficult disease to deal with that it seems impossible that the movie can’t wring any real emotion out of it, but it manages. You’d think that older Noah might be angry, sad, or even just frustrated that his wife of however many years doesn’t recognize him anymore, but he never seems any more than mildly put out.

That’s what so frustrating about it. One of the most raw and affecting love stories I’ve ever seen in film was Michael Haneke’s Amour , because could see the male lead fighting against his sadness and anger and frustration while caring for his wife, while still being in love with her. It makes the relationship feel more real and therefore affecting.

“I think I hear Nicolas Winding Refn calling me …”

The Unhealthy Relationship:

Once again, I hope this particular section is self explanatory. In this case, I’m going to ball together all the stuff the movie depicts as romantic or even just acceptable, which really is not great, and we’ll talk about it. This is the main point of these articles, so I’m hoping this is the section that will really land with people.

The Notebook has the aforementioned stalking and suicide threatening right at the start. It’s more or less the first thing Noah does on-screen, which had the side affect of turning me so far against him that he basically had no chance of me ever liking him. The fact that he also demanded that she yell that she wanted to go out with him during his emotional blackmail certainly didn’t help.

The movie also doesn’t do a great job of depicting them as a happy couple outside of their start. The narrator openly states that Noah and Allie fight all the time, and they both comment on it later, which doesn’t seem particularly healthy. They try to brush it off by saying that they still love each other (this film is a master of Tell, Don’t Show), but it’s an odd thing to draw attention to.

Also she cheats on her fiancé? Like, I know the movie is pushing the idea that she and Noah are soulmates, and she does eventually leave him for Noah, but it’s still an incredibly s****y thing to do to the guy, who seems like a perfectly nice person.

All of this points towards the point that I made earlier, back at the beginning of the plot summary: Noah and Allie are just a couple of stupid teenagers who are taking their relationship too seriously. Of course the movie isn’t intending to portray it that way, but it’s the way it comes across to me. Neither character really matures or grows during their time apart, which I suppose explains why they’re so eager to get back to each other, because they’re both still teenagers at heart. There’s nothing wrong with a high school romance, in theory, but portraying it as this huge be-all and end-all is weird, especially when there are elements of abuse in how the relationship started.

But just analyzing one of the Sparks based movies would never be enough for me, so tune in next time, when I continue my long and probably painful journey through the entire Nicolas Sparks film oeuvre. When will next time be? Hell if I know. But until next time…

*Hums “Raindrops Keep Fallin’ on my Head.”*

James is a Connecticut-based, Alaskan-born cinephile with an obsession with The Room and a god complex. His interests include Warhammer 40k , the films of  Nicolas Cage (both good and bad), and obscure moments in history. He writes movie reviews for Moar Powah under the name Elessar  and also has a blog, where is reviewing every episode of The X-Files at I Want to Review . His twitter can be found at Elessar42 , and his tumblr can be found at FootballInTuxedos .

— The Mary Sue has a strict comment policy that forbids, but is not limited to, personal insults toward anyone , hate speech, and trolling.—

Follow The Mary Sue on Twitter , Facebook , Tumblr , Pinterest , & Google+ .

Love and Relationships in “The Notebook” Movie Essay

Introduction.

The influence of popular culture on the lives of billions of people cannot be overestimated or under-evaluated. Popular culture is a part of modern life. It is called ‘popular’ because the vast majority of people understand it and react according to personal preferences, would it be the positive or negative, or neutral perception of the particular piece of popular culture. Mass production of popular culture content affects the quality of the outcomes. The paper explores the motion picture The Notebook because it is one of the vivid examples of a romantic story that demonstrates how love helps people to overcome challenges in life.

Favorite Piece

The movie called The Notebook depicts the classic love triangle between the girl, Allie Hamilton, an innocent girl from the respectful family, Noah Calhoun, a young man from the countryside, and Lon Hammond, Jr., a perspective rich young lawyer. The summer months spent by Noah and Allie together sparkled a great teenage love that had been forbidden by Allie’s mother who took Allie away from Noah. He tried to contact Allie but failed as the mother did not want to allow it to happen. In despair, Noah went to World War II with his friend Fin who was killed in a battle later. Allie met Lon at the war and thought she fell in love again. However, once they accidentally met, Allie and Noah realized that their love was still burning in their hearts and reunited. The had a happy life with a house, children, and grandchildren until Allie got sick and started to forget her beloved ones. Noah kept reading her the notebook with the story of their life inside day after day to the moment when death reunited them again.

It is one of my favorite stories about love and strong will that allowed people to be together. It teaches me that nothing is over, and there is always a chance to achieve the desired goal. Everything depends on the efforts applied. I have learned from this movie that passion, loyalty, strong will, and patience can lead to the results a person desires the most. Additionally, it is a very romantic story that emphasizes the power of love. Distances, time, and will of other people cannot be stronger than true love. Even the fact that your beloved partner forgets you every morning can be overthrown by the power love.

Expectations and Social Norms

In The Notebook, the love of a rich girl and a countryside boy breaks the social norms acceptable for both classes. It has always been inappropriate to have a relationship between the poor and the rich, so Allie and Noah break social norms in the story. However, their love is bigger than any barrier of such kind. A viewer expects from the movie some miracle and it happens. The insightful factor of the story is the idea that no one should give up on something or somebody if the desire is big enough. Noah fought for his happiness even after Allie got sick and did it every day, reading the notebook to her to remind that their love was still alive.

Summing, the paper explored the motion picture The Notebook because it is one of the vivid examples of a romantic story that demonstrates how love helps people to overcome the challenges in life. This classic love story emphasizes the power of love and teaches to never give up as everything is possible. It is a great, heart-piercing story that can be recommended to watch.

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IvyPanda. (2020, August 26). Love and Relationships in "The Notebook" Movie. https://ivypanda.com/essays/love-and-relationships-in-the-notebook-movie/

"Love and Relationships in "The Notebook" Movie." IvyPanda , 26 Aug. 2020, ivypanda.com/essays/love-and-relationships-in-the-notebook-movie/.

IvyPanda . (2020) 'Love and Relationships in "The Notebook" Movie'. 26 August.

IvyPanda . 2020. "Love and Relationships in "The Notebook" Movie." August 26, 2020. https://ivypanda.com/essays/love-and-relationships-in-the-notebook-movie/.

1. IvyPanda . "Love and Relationships in "The Notebook" Movie." August 26, 2020. https://ivypanda.com/essays/love-and-relationships-in-the-notebook-movie/.

Bibliography

IvyPanda . "Love and Relationships in "The Notebook" Movie." August 26, 2020. https://ivypanda.com/essays/love-and-relationships-in-the-notebook-movie/.

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The Notebook (2004)

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The Notebook

2004, Romance/Drama, 2h 4m

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Critics Consensus

It's hard not to admire its unabashed sentimentality, but The Notebook is too clumsily manipulative to rise above its melodramatic clichés. Read critic reviews

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In 1940s South Carolina, mill worker Noah Calhoun (Ryan Gosling) and rich girl Allie (Rachel McAdams) are desperately in love. But her parents don't approve. When Noah goes off to serve in World War II, it seems to mark the end of their love affair. In the interim, Allie becomes involved with another man (James Marsden). But when Noah returns to their small town years later, on the cusp of Allie's marriage, it soon becomes clear that their romance is anything but over.

Rating: PG-13 (Some Sexuality)

Genre: Romance, Drama

Original Language: English

Director: Nick Cassavetes

Producer: Mark Johnson , Lynn Harris

Writer: Nick Cassavetes , Jeremy Leven , Nicholas Sparks , Jan Sardi

Release Date (Theaters): Jun 25, 2004  wide

Release Date (Streaming): Mar 18, 2013

Box Office (Gross USA): $81.0M

Runtime: 2h 4m

Distributor: New Line Cinema

Production Co: New Line Cinema, Avery Pix

Sound Mix: Surround, Dolby SRD, DTS, SDDS

Aspect Ratio: Scope (2.35:1)

Cast & Crew

Ryan Gosling

Noah Calhoun

Rachel McAdams

Allie Hamilton

James Garner

Gena Rowlands

Allie Calhoun

James Marsden

Kevin Connolly

Sam Shepard

Frank Calhoun

Anne Hamilton

David Thornton

John Hamilton

Jamie Anne Allman

Martha Shaw

Heather Wahlquist

Sara Tuffington

Nick Cassavetes

Jeremy Leven

Nicholas Sparks

Mark Johnson

Avram "Butch" Kaplan

Executive Producer

Toby Emmerich

Aaron Zigman

Original Music

Robert Fraisse

Cinematographer

Film Editing

Lynn Harris

Film Editor

Sarah Knowles

Production Design

Antonio Muño-Hierro

Art Director

Scott Ritenour

Chuck Potter

Set Decoration

Karyn Wagner

Costume Design

Matthew Barry

Nancy Green-Keyes

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By 2004, they had, like, twelve adaptations of Nicholas Sparks books, and it took them this long to get around to adapting his first one. Hey, whatever, I welcome it, because this film is actually pretty good, and we seriously need compensation for "A Walk to Remember", not just between 2002 and 2004, but still to this day, yet that didn't stop the critics from having some kind of bias that kept them from liking this. Hey, I can't say that I went into this film thinking, "From the director of 'John Q' comes an adaptation of a book by the author of 'A Walk to Remember' that I'm sure will not stink", nor did I walk away finding it awesome, but make no mistake, this film is better than they say, even though it does have its cheesy moments. Hey, when this film came out, Ryan Gosling had just got done playing a Neo-Nazi and some teenager who brutally murdered people... in two separate films, so it was about time for him to do something a bit fluffier, much like Rachel McAdams, who just had to have been an emotional wreck after getting off of such intense projects as "The Hot Chick" and "Mean Girls". I can think of some people who would say that they were more disturbed by "The Hot Chick" than anything that Gosling did before this film, so I guess the match works, yet Gosling still didn't immediately find his handsome, charismatic and talented self fired into the stardom that McAdams got by this film, probably because Gosling still had the integrity and, well, after this film, money to go back to doing stuff that middle-aged housewives aren't likely to even hear about. I mean, don't get me wrong, Gosling broke out eventually, but come on, it still took a while even after this film, though that might just be because of the mixed reviews, because, as you all know very well, the members of the pop culture who decide who becomes popular or not always listen to critics. Sarcasm aside, the audience is right in saying that Nick Sparks actually did something good before doing about 100 mediocre things, though you shouldn't completely disregard the critics, as their complaints are hardly completely invalid. At just over two hours, the film is somewhat lengthy, and is certainly pretty meaty, yet its concept, in a lot of areas, holds too much meat to fully juice in two hours, as reflected by story structure's pacing's being, like the pacing of plenty of other Nicholas Sparks novel adaptations, uneven, having enough meditative points to compel thoroughly, but still taking advantage of its main story's being framed to all too often only hit highlights in exposition in a storybook, objective fashion that distances you from substance a bit, and thins out meditative value. The film will run a steady pace, only to suddenly jar things along, and while you're never quite jarred loose from the film, events are often awkwardly tossed at you, and such a formula proves to be detrimental to the momentum of substance's impact, whose blows are further softened by yet another hallmark in Nick Sparks stories: subtlety issues. There have been more histrionic interpretations of Sparks' questionable dramatic efforts, but when this film's genuineness slips, its subtlety lapses range from offputting to considerable, whether when it's slapping down a rather disconcertingly syrupy dramatic beat or going so far as to craft such borderline over-the-top characters as wealthy, disapproving parents antagonists, whose layers feel a particularly forced, yet are not the only questionable components to characterization depth. Our leads are at least well-portrayed enough to come off as layered and meaty, but when it's all said and done, there is only so much depth in this film, and I don't know if it's because of the superficiality in Sparks' story concept or because something got lost in translation when Sparks' story was brought to the screen, but either way, the point is that histrionics can be fought back only so much. Needless to say, the histrionics would be more forgivable if the storytelling beats that are somewhat cheesed up weren't so familiar, because if no other department in this effort feels somewhat lazy, it's the originality department, which turns over stone after stone, until predictability ensues. There's a twist to this film that is so easy to see coming that, before too long, the film even feels like it gives up trying to obscure it, and while that is the height in the final product's predictability, it's not the only predictable beat to the final product, which makes up for originality and dramatic shortcomings more often than not with considerable inspiration, but faces shortcomings nevertheless, falling short of its full potential. With that said, the final product doesn't quite fall so far from grace that it doesn't reward, having many a flaw, but ultimately quite a few more strengths, even in the photographic department. The film isn't stunning, or at least not consistently so, yet when cinematographer Robert Fraisse's eye catches the right environment, the visual results range from striking or truly gorgeous, boasting a soulful grace that catches your eyes when it is infused in Fraisse's photography, as surely as it grips your attention when it is infused in Aaron Zigman's score, which is a bit formulaic and minimalist, but lovely and heartfelt, with a distinguished flavor that proves to be comfortably compatible with the substance that it compliments so well. Aesthetically, the film accels with a graceful taste that does a fine job of breathing soul into flawed substance, whose effectiveness is ameliorated a bit by the filmmakers' aesthetic punch-ups, but, quite frankly, doesn't need pretty visuals and nice tunes to gain your attention. Nicholas Sparks' story concept is, of course, flawed, being derivative and with its share of subtlety issues, but when you step back and see through all of the hiccups, you can find one of Sparks' most worthy concepts, and while such a concept is not fleshed out nearly as much as it could have been in execution, it's rich with endearing heart that cannot be ignored, especially when emphasized by what is, in fact, done right in Jeremy Leven's and Jan Sardi's script, and, of course, Nick Cassavetes' direction. Even outside of this film, Cassavetes isn't exactly notorious for his genuineness as a teller of a conceptually resonant tale, and sure enough, the histrionic value in the film is all too often milked for all its worth, yet for every somewhat overblown dramatic beat, Cassavetes delivers a resonant punch that gives you a taste of what could have been, and firmly reminds you of what ultimately is, a very compelling drama that, in spite of its shortcomings, wins you over time and again. By the time we reach the final act, the film really starts to pierce with sentimentality that is backed enough by genuineness and soul to all but move you to tears, and while this story concept deserves to have more of that punch, perhaps even at a greater intensity, golden occasions can be found the in midst of a compellingness that, while often diluted, never dissipates, being backed by much in the way of inspiration, both off of the screen and on the screen. The acting isn't killer, but it is strong across the board, with James Garner and Gena Rowlands ultimately delivering on sparkling chemistry and emotional range in their portrayal of good, but old and deteriorating souls, while the dashing Ryan Gosling and gorgeous Rachel McAdams carry most of the film with their distinguished charismas, bonded through powerful chemistry, and backed with a human emotional resonance that is more layered than the actual written characterization of the Noah Calhoun and Allison "Allie" Hamilton characters, who are well-defined enough by their portrayers to engross as worthy leads. Many are not likely to walk away loving this film, but it is rather underappreciated, being flawed something fierce, but ultimately with enough inspiration and rich soul to thoroughly engage and ultimately reward. Overall, pacing unevenness keeps the film from soaking up its full depth, whose kick goes further diluted by subtlety issues and conventionalism, until you're left with a flawed final product, but one that still compels, using lovely cinematography and score work to compliment the taste within Nicholas Sparks' undeniably meaty story concept, which is brought to life well enough by Nick Cassevetes' direction and a strong cast for "The Notebook" to ultimately stand as a flawed, but quite good melodrama that rewards the patient. 3/5 - Good

I remember the time where I've only seen few parts and didn't get a chance to see it all the way through. Only because I was not interested enough to get into the film. So it did not look interesting to me at first, but now that I'm older, things started to change. Here I am rewatching it from the beginning to the end, and I have to say that I pretty much enjoyed it. However, it gets slow and boring at times. I had to really see it because I keep hearing people talking about how good the movie was, and how the kissing-in-the-rain moment was the best thing to ever happen in a romantic movie. Apparently, it was a decent moment, but it's kinda overrated What makes this movie so unique is that it tells a story of a couple fell in love over many years. Not only that, but how they got into rough moments from each other. The plot was interesting and well told, but it takes too long to get into the point. Additionally, the story is something that people can relate to. The performance from each cast were great. They all deserve an Oscar, if this movie would have gotten more positive reviews. The two main cast (Rachel McAdams & Ryan Gosling) put so much talent into their characters and had a good chemistry here. It did had a well-written script, which you hardly see in most Romantic films. The Notebook is one of the few Romantic films that I really enjoy. It is not Gone With The Wind, nor Love Story, but this film is good for what it is. If it wasn't for all that hype, then I would have given it more stars. Despite what people say, this film is almost there to its greatness if they made the plot a little faster, but it was fun and interesting. Overall, it's not your typical love story, which is a good thing.

The Notebook is a very good movie, a fun movie, but at times a boring movie. What seperates this from other chick flicks is that this is told throuh the eyes of a man who tells the relationship with him and his wife over many years. The plot was fun a original and actually good, but at times very slow. The cast was great, I think Racheal mcAdams deserved more praise but thats just me. A slow movie, very slow, but overall becomes one of the best chick flicks ever made.

I don't remember too much about the movie but other then the fact that the drama was wayyyy too forced. Cliche after cliche and overall, was not interesting enough to keep me entertained.

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The Notebook Essay

The story opens with Duke (Old Noah) reading to Allie in a nursing home. He starts at the beginning, July 1940, at a Carnival in Seabrook, South Carolina. That’s where Noah and Allie meet for the first time…and where Noah falls instantly in love while Allie takes her sweet time warming up to him. Mutual friends Fin and Sara eventually bring them together more often until they go see a movie as a group. On the walk home is when things start heating up between Noah and Allie.

Allie is from a wealthy family and Noah is from the wrong side of the tracks. Their social differences do not stop their relationship from blossoming. Allie spends her summer with Noah and she falls madly in love with him but she has to go back home at the end of the summer because she is due to start college.

Allie’s mother does not approve of Noah and she does everything in her power to stop the relationship.

Noah writes Allie letters every day for a year but she never receives them because her mother hides them. When Allie goes off to college she meets a man named Lon who is wealthy and has plans to marry her.

Allie runs out after him and they end up getting into a huge fight. Allie and Noah lose touch but reconnect years Later whenFin, now going by his middle name Lucas returns from the war, injured. Alllie is married with children at this point, but she and Lucas still share a raw intensity for each other preventing them from ever forgetting about their long-lost love affair as teenagers.

Noah comes home and finds out that Allie is engaged to another man. Noah writes her a letter everyday for a year in an attempt to win her back. The film ends with them getting back together and getting married.

The Notebook is a 2004 American romantic drama film directed by Nick Cassavetes and based on the novel of the same name by Nicholas Sparks. The film stars Ryan Gosling and Rachel McAdams as a young couple who fall in love despite the opposition of their parents and peers.

The film received mixed reviews but was praised for its acting and direction. It earned $115 million worldwide against a budget of $30 million, becoming one of the highest-grossing films of 2004.

The Notebook was nominated for several awards, including five Teen Choice Awards, and won the MTV Movie Award for Best Kiss. The film has been included in lists of the greatest romantic films of all time and is often cited as a favorite film by many fans.

Allie quickly fell for soldier Lon Hammond Jr. after nursing him back to health, and he soon proposed. But when Noah returned from the war, he found that his father had sold their home in order to buy and fix up the one they’d always wanted.

Noah goes to see Allie and finds that she is engaged. Noah does not give up hope and decides to write her 365 letters, one for each day of the year, in an attempt to win her back. However, Allie’s mother Anne Hamilton has always disapproved of Noah and does not want her daughter to marry him.

When Allie reads the letters she is torn between her past love with Noah and her new life with Lon. She eventually chooses Lon and they get married. They have two children together, a boy named Jamie and a girl named Anna.

The film then jumps ahead to present day where Allie is living in a nursing home suffering from Alzheimer’s disease. Her husband visits her every day and reads to her from a notebook that contains the story of their love.

The notebook is a powerful film that tells the story of everlasting love. Nicholas Sparks does an amazing job of creating characters that are easy to relate to and care about. The film is also very visually stunning. If you are looking for a romantic film that will make you believe in true love, then The Notebook is the perfect choice.

After Allie tries on her wedding gown, she spots Noah’s picture in the newspapers next to the house he told her about. She wonders how he is doing and decides to go check up on him. So, she drives back to Seabrook where Noah lives. They have dinner together and afterwards, Noah asks her to come back tomorrow.

Allie goes back to her apartment and Noah calls her. She tells him that she is engaged to be married. Allie’s fiancé, Lon, takes her out to Seabrook and they meet Noah. He tells them that he is going to sell the house.

Noah visits Allie in New York and she tells him that her mother does not approve of him. They argue and Noah leaves. Allie’s mother tells her that she needs to choose between Noah and Lon.

Lon takes Allie out to dinner and propose marriage to her. She says yes but is clearly not sure about her decision. The next day, she sees Noah again and they spend time together at the notebook house. Allie tells Noah she is getting married and he asks her to not marry Lon.

Allie goes ahead with the wedding but has doubts. At the last minute, she decides to leave Lon at the altar and goes back to Seabrook. She finds Noah and they spend the night together talking. The next day, Allie’s mother comes to visit them.

She tells Allie that she needs to make a decision between Noah and Lon. Allie chooses Noah and they get married.

The film ends with an older Allie and Noah sitting outside together looking at the notebook. It is revealed that Allie has Alzheimer’s disease and does not remember Noah anymore. However, every day he tells her their story and she falls in love with him all over again.

The Notebook is a 2004 American romantic drama film directed by Nick Cassavetes, written by Jeremy Leven from Jan Sardi’s adaptation of Nicholas Sparks’ 1996 novel of the same name. The film stars Ryan Gosling and Rachel McAdams as a young couple who fall in love in the 1940s. Their story is narrated from the present day by an elderly man (played by James Garner) recounting his past to a fellow nursing home resident (played by Gena Rowlands, Cassavetes’ mother).

The Notebook received mixed reviews but was generally praised for its acting performances (particularly those of Gosling and McAdams), its screenplay, and its cinematography. The film became a sleeper hit grossing over $115 million in North America and $81 million in the rest of the world for a worldwide total of $196 million.

The film received several award nominations, winning eight Teen Choice Awards, a Satellite Award, and an MTV Movie Award. The Notebook was also nominated for Best Picture at the Academy Awards.

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The Notebook Movie Review

The notebook – a realistic romance movie.

Nicholas Sparks’ first novel The Notebook is what made him famous and was later turned into a movie. A romantic candle light dinner quickly turns into horror as Allie is restrained and sedated because she forgot who her husband was. Allie suffers from Alzheimer’s disease, so her husband Noah reads to her every day to trigger her memory. She lives in a world of isolation because she doesn’t remember who her family is and doesn’t do her favorite hobbies anymore.

Noah stays by her side in the nursing home they live in, holding together the bond they once shared before they became strangers. The Notebook is the most realistic romance movie because it shows the hardships couples face as well as the effects that illness has on the inflicted person and everyone around them.

Romantic drama movies are usually whimsical with how love is perceived as being simple (Galloway, Engstrom, & Emmers-Sommer, 2015).

Average plots follow the same old path of boy meets girl, they fall in love, and get married. The end. The Notebook takes a more unique approach by intertwining tragedy throughout the movie which keeps the viewers intrigued. This isn’t a film where the ending can’t be foreshadowed within the first half hour of watching. The plot twists relate to real instances that a lot of people face and shows the dark side of love that no other movie wants to acknowledge (Galloway, Engstrom, & Emmers-Sommer, 2015).

Realistic aspects

The first realistic aspect shown in this movie are Noah and Allie’s young love when they met as teenagers.

Proficient in: Free Papers

“ Amazing as always, gave her a week to finish a big assignment and came through way ahead of time. ”

They fight which is true among every couple of any age. Nobody is perfect, and arguments happen which this movie expresses with scenes of yelling and tears shed. Relationships aren’t always happy and it’s refreshing to see a romantic movie not follow the cliché path of flawless couples. Allie’s parents are wealthy and disapproved of lower-class Noah from the start. Allie was going to college in the Fall and her parents were moving. They didn’t think their daughter’s fling would last the entire summer and as school was approaching they realized that the young couple was in love. They worried that Allie wouldn’t have wanted to go because that would mean she’d have to leave Noah behind. So, they did what they thought was best and began to drive a wedge between the two. Allie’s father talked to Noah telling him to drop the relationship and find a girl in his league.

After Allie and Noah got in a fight over her leaving for college, they broke up. The next morning, she had already left. Noah wrote to Allie once a month for two years in which he never got a reply. It turned out that Allie’s mother had hidden Noah’s notes, so she wouldn’t be sidetracked from school. Allie’s parents had the resources to send her to college and had good intentions for her future but went about it all wrong. They were controlling and decided for Allie to end the relationship because college was more important than a boy. A lot of young couples today experience this problem when they date in high school but leaving for college usually leads to breaking up. Parents want the best for their kids and it’s understandable to try to lure them to make good decisions but it’s overbearing when they try to influence how a teen tries being independent.

Noah and Allie’s relationship in their old age while living in the nursing home is even more complex than when they were young. Allie thinks of Noah as a friendly stranger whom she politely listens to. He introduces himself to her every day and asks if he can read her a story about their love life. He is persistent when he reads because even though it might take months, occasionally Allie gets a few hours of memory back which is triggered by the story. When the memory comes back, her and Noah soak up every second until it abruptly ends with Allie falling back into her dementia.

Noah loves Allie even though she rarely even knows who he is. He lives with her in the nursing home because her Alzheimer’s got too bad for him to take care of her from home. He admitted himself into the nursing home the same time she did, so he could be by her side. Noah’s suffering from arthritis and diagnosed with cancer but chose not to seek treatment because he wanted to spend his healthy years with Allie. At one point, Noah had snuck into Allie’s room in the middle of the night and accidentally woke her up. He immediately regretted his decision because he knew she was going to start screaming and alert the caregivers, but she kissed him. She whispered, “Oh, Noah…I’ve missed you” and they make love (Literary Gem, 2000, pg. 307). Romance movies are notorious for sex scenes, but this scene is a moment of passion between two old people which is never seen (Lazar & Hirsch, 2018). But it’s a part of life, just because people get old doesn’t mean they aren’t sexual beings anymore. It’s just that nobody thinks about it because our movie culture only focuses on young couples. This gives the perception that sex is only for the young, this is a movie where elderly people can relate (Lazar & Hirsch, 2018).

Effects of having Alzheimer’s

The effects of having Alzheimer’s or any illness are extremely hard on the inflicted person. In Allie’s case she feels lost and secluded because she can’t remember who anybody is, not even herself. When she dips back into her disease after a clear moment, she gets scared and starts to scream which is stressful and bad for her health. She feels sad when she regains her memory because of all the time she’s missed. She also profusely apologizes to Noah because she’s embarrassed that she led them into the nursing home. A lot of ill people feel these emotions even though they may not show it. Maura Mcintyre, a journalist from the University of Toronto explains, “There shouldn’t be any stigma attached, any more than for somebody who has developed cancer or Parkinson’s or anything else. It’s another disease. The public needs to know that there’s nothing dirty or unclean about Alzheimer’s” (Mcintyre & Cole, 2008, pg. 222). Mcintyre is specifically talking about Alzheimer’s, but it could relate to any illness that somebody is going through. People who are suffering from an illness feel stigmatized and often fight their battle alone because they don’t want to bother others (Mcintyre & Cole, 2008). This movie gives insight and understanding for those who are suffering and how they feel sorrier for their loved ones over themselves.

It’s not only the person being afflicted by the illness who is suffering, it’s also everybody around them. In this case, Noah gets sad and frightened every time Allie freaks out. No matter how many times it happens, he still gets heartbroken over how distraught and unsafe Allie feels in his arms. This makes the caretakers always on edge because the only way to calm Allie during these moments are to restrain and sedate her (Mcintyre & Cole, 2008). The staff feels guilty for not doing more for Allie during her forgetful episodes. But they allow Noah to keep trying to jog Allie’s memory because the illness is only going to get worse to where she won’t have any memory again. (Mcintyre & Cole, 2008). Noah and Allie’s children feel neglected because Allie doesn’t know who they are. Whenever the family comes to the nursing home to see them, Noah introduces Allie to the family as a friend of his as if they don’t already know who she is. This keeps her calm but after the introduction she always gets up and leaves to allow Noah to visit with his family in private. So, Allie’s kids and grandkids don’t even see her for more than ten minutes. Illness takes a great deal of support even though it poses as a sacrifice for everybody involved.

The Notebook did a great job on not sugar-coating the difficult aspects of life. It portrays the hardships that relationships face though all stages of life. This movie reaches out to a broader audience of older people because the storyline is based on the elderly version of Noah and Allie. It also educates the viewers about what illness does to people behind closed doors by giving viewers a peek into the life of those suffering. This movie hides a deeper message of not only the meaning of love but the meaning of life.

• Galloway, L., Engstrom, E., & Emmers-Sommer, T. M. (2015). Does Movie Viewing Cultivate Young People’s Unrealistic Expectations About Love and Marriage? Marriage & Family Review, 51(8), 687–712. https://doi-org.mtproxy.lib.umt.edu:3443/10.1080/01494929.2015.1061629
• Lazar, A., & Hirsch, T. L. (2018). What movie advisory boards say about the cinematic representations of love among older adults. Educational Gerontology, 44(1), 74–79. https://doi-org.mtproxy.lib.umt.edu:3443/10.1080/03601277.2017.1397931
• Literary Gem. (2000). Journal of Sex Education & Therapy, 25(4), 306–307. Retrieved from http://search.ebscohost.com.mtproxy.lib.umt.edu:3048/login.aspx?direct=true&db=a9h&AN=4062673&site=ehost-live
• Mcintyre, M., & Cole, A. (2008). Love Stories About Caregiving and Alzheimers Disease. Journal of Health Psychology, 13(2), 213–225. https://doi-org.mtproxy.lib.umt.edu:3443/10.1177/1359105307086701

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The Notebook: 7+ Thoughts I Had While Rewatching The Ryan Gosling And Rachel McAdams Movie

If you're a bird, I'm a bird.

The Notebook is one of the best romantic movies of all time. It’s a beautiful tale of an unbreakable love story between people of different social classes. On paper, they would never work. However, their love is powerful enough to break any barriers that stand in their way. Ryan Gosling and Rachel McAdams star as Noah and Allie, the main protagonists of this love story.

I wouldn’t say The Notebook ranks in my top 5 favorite romantic movies of all time, but it’s definitely in the top 20. The undeniable chemistry between Gosling and McAdams makes it a must-watch for all romance movie fans. Because I haven’t seen a romantic movie that I’ve really loved in a while, I decided to revisit some of my favorite movie romances, and that included a rewatching of The Notebook. I have some thoughts.

Warning The Notebook spoilers ahead. Proceed with caution.

Ryan Gosling And Rachel McAdams Give Some OF Their Best Performances In The Notebook 

Ryan Gosling and Rachel McAdams are both really good actors. I would even argue that Gosling is one of the best actors who hasn’t won an Oscar. While rewatching The Notebook , I couldn’t help but be even more convinced of this opinion. Gosling and McAdams completely convince us that they’re in love. Not only that, you see how much they put into these performances.

In the scene where Noah hears Allie’s parents calling him trash, how can your heart not break watching Noah react to it? In the scene where Allie pretends to be a bird, how can you not feel her joy? You feel all of these characters’ emotions because McAdams, Gosling, and the entire cast give really strong performances.

For two-plus hours, Gosling becomes Noah and McAdams becomes Allie. I’ve seen many Rachel McAdams movies and many Ryan Gosling movies and Allie and Noah are some of their most beloved characters because of how good they are in these roles. The Notebook is one of the best Rachel McAdams movies and one of the best Ryan Gosling movies . They’re both really outstanding in this film. 

The Costumes And Makeup Departments Are The MVPs Of This Movie 

The Notebook starts with Allie and Noah as teens, then ends with them as older adults. At some point, they’re in their mid-20s. The oldest versions of Allie and Noah are played by James Garner and Gena Rowlands. The rest of the ages are played by Rachel McAdams and Ryan Gosling. They completely convince you that they’re teens at the start of the movie. This is partly because of their acting skills, and partly because of the makeup department.

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They tone back the makeup with McAdams to give her a fresh face to portray teen Allie. Clean-shaven Ryan Gosling looks like a teen. Once he has facial hair, he becomes an adult Noah who has seen some things. As Allie ages, more makeup appears to be added, which makes her look older and more sophisticated. The makeup is really subtle but completely transforms these characters.

The 1940s fashion is really gorgeous in The Notebook. Every one of Allie’s outfits, I would love to steal. They’re just so fabulous. The costume designers also use the clothes in very interesting ways. I noticed that the outfit that Allie and Noah wear when they meet, mimics the clothing that they’re wearing as older adults, at least in terms of colors. The Notebook is one of those movies where it’s clear that multiple elements, including costumes and makeup, work in harmony to make this such a memorable film. 

The Notebook Breakup Scene Is One of The Best In History

Thankfully, The Notebook isn’t one of the great breakup movies , because that would totally ruin the vibe of the film. However, the film has one of the greatest movie breakup scenes. Many adore The Notebook because of all the major declarations of love, the steamy sex scene, and the enticing chemistry between the lead characters. I love all those things as well, but I also really like the main breakup scene.

It starts with Noah having his heart broken by hearing what Allie’s parents think of him. Then it leads to him ending it. We see every emotion in that scene, from anger to desperation to confusion to fear to hopelessness. It’s brilliant. Then we see parallel elements of that scene in the part where Noah fights for them to be together, but Allie doesn’t want to break Lon’s ( James Marsden ) heart.

The Notebook breakup scene just feels so realistic and raw.

The Drama And Romance Always Sweeps Me Away 

Until rewatching The Notebook , I didn’t realize how much the film engulfs you. The two-plus hours pass fast because I’m so drawn into this story and this world. I know what is going to happen, but I can’t look away. It’s one of those rare films that really takes hold of you from start to finish. You feel all their emotions, you suspend reality and reason, and you let your hopeless romantic side thrive.

Like Allie and Noah’s love story, The Notebook can be all-consuming. 

I Can’t Help But Feel Bad For Lon

Lon joins the list of movie boyfriends involved in a love triangle who do nothing wrong but just aren’t the right guy. Sometimes the other guy in these types of movies sucks. Lon is not one of those guys. Allie not only cheats on him, but she does it while completely forgetting about him for days. According to my calculation, Allie and Noah only dated for a few months (before getting married and starting their life together), but she dated Lon for at least three years before completely dumping him.

Even if you love Allie and Noah together, you kind of have to think that they were quite terrible for how they treated their exes. At least poor Martha (Jamie Brown) could see their romance as a window of what could be for her. We don’t even completely get Lon’s reaction to the breakup.

For all we know, the Allie breakup could have been Lon’s villain origin story. I know that viewers aren’t supposed to hate Allie and Noah, because we’re supposed to view this all as them being so in love that they would always only want each other. However, love shouldn’t be an excuse to just cheat and neglect your fiancé.

Is The Notebook Ending Tragic Or Happy? 

When I originally saw The Notebook , I considered it a happy ending. They were able to live their lives together and even leave the world together. However, watching it again, I couldn’t help but wonder if this isn’t exactly a happy ending. Yes, they got to die together, but it’s pretty terrible that they reached the stage in their life where their bodies began to betray them. That’s part of life and aging, but it’s also a pretty downer way to end a love story. Realistic? Probably? Downer? Absolutely.

The sadness of The Notebook ending makes it easy to see why some versions don’t show it. It’s definitely a happy ending that they got to live a full life together and were able to leave the world together. The tragedy comes with the whole aging process and how it can disrupt even a beautiful love story, even if only temporarily. 

Other Thoughts 

The Notebook rewatch sparked so many thoughts, some silly, some profound, and more just ramblings. Here are my other thoughts.

• I think I just really love period piece love stories. Something about them makes everything more tragic and heightened. 
• The Notebook really has a thing for birds. I’m assuming they’re a metaphor for Allie feeling caged by parents, and society, but finally being able to fly free at the end. 
• I love writing letters, but even I find the idea of 365 letters kind of tedious. 
• I had completely erased the war part of The Notebook from my memory.  It’s so quick that it’s barely in there. 
• I would love a prequel about Allie’s mom and her ex. Basically, Noah and Allie, but one that doesn’t work out. 
• The Notebook has so many great quotes. 
• Rachel McAdams’ lungs must have hurt with all the random screaming moments in the movie. 

You can find The Notebook and plenty of other great romance movies on HBO Max . 

Stream The Notebook on HBO Max . 

Spent most of my life in various parts of Illinois, including attending college in Evanston. I have been a life long lover of pop culture, especially television, turned that passion into writing about all things entertainment related. When I'm not writing about pop culture, I can be found channeling Gordon Ramsay by kicking people out the kitchen.

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Alive Movie Review: Unraveling the Gripping Tale

Dive into the heart of the cinematic masterpiece “Alive” with this review, exploring the riveting narrative of survival and resilience. Released in 1993 and directed by Frank Marshall, the movie vividly depicts the true story of the Uruguayan Air Force Flight 571 crash in the Andes. This review delves into the authentic portrayal of the survivors’ physical and emotional struggles, emphasizing the film’s impact in prompting discussions about morality, sacrifice, and the profound will to survive. Join the journey through this gripping movie, experiencing the raw authenticity that has left an enduring impression on audiences worldwide. Moreover, at PapersOwl, there are additional free essay samples connected to Movie Review.

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Let’s talk about the movie “Alive,” a real nail-biter that took the world by storm in 1993. Directed by Frank Marshall, this flick brings to life the incredible true story of the Uruguayan Air Force Flight 571 crash in the Andes.

What makes “Alive” so special? It’s not just another survival story; it’s a deep dive into the human spirit. Imagine being stranded in the middle of nowhere, facing your worst nightmares, and somehow finding the guts to keep going.

That’s the essence of this film.

But what really hits home is how real it feels. The actors nail it, bringing out the raw, emotional side of the survivors’ struggles. It’s not just about physical challenges; it’s about the mind games, the moral dilemmas, and the sheer will to make it through.

“Alive” isn’t just a movie; it’s a conversation starter. It makes you think about what it means to truly live and the connections that tie us together. It’s not just about survival; it’s about the choices we make and the strength we find when the odds are stacked against us.

This film has a lasting impact, reminding us that storytelling is more than entertainment—it’s a force that can inspire, make us reflect, and bring out our empathy. “Alive” isn’t just a story of survival; it’s a testament to the resilience of the human spirit and the enduring power of hope in the face of the impossible.

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Critic’s Notebook: Sharper Than Ever, French Crime Classic ‘Le Samouraï’ Might Be the Coolest Film Ever Made

Jean-Pierre Melville's sleek French noir set the template for everyone from Michael Mann to John Woo. Variety’s chief critic explains why a new 4K restoration is essential viewing.

By Peter Debruge

Peter Debruge

Chief Film Critic

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SPOILER ALERT: The following essay discusses key plot points, including the ending.

Last weekend, I took in “Le Samouraï” for what must have been the sixth or seventh time, relishing the new 4K restoration of Jean-Pierre Melville ’s masterpiece (now playing at Laemmle theaters in Los Angeles). As I exited the screening, I discreetly eavesdropped on my fellow audience members. Most seemed impressed. A few were still processing what they’d seen: an existential study of a lone killer, told with radically little dialogue. “That wasn’t at all what I expected,” one woman told her friend. “I thought we were going to see some kind of samurai movie.”

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The enigmatic title refers to the main character’s mentality more than his métier: As played by a stone-faced Delon, Jef Costello is a hit man who kills on command. His master is whoever writes his checks, and his motive is simple: because he was paid. “What kind of man are you?” asks Valérie (Caty Rosier), the nightclub pianist who sees Jef exiting her boss’s office moments after his murder. Later, when asked to identify Jef in a police lineup, she lies to the cops, swearing it couldn’t have been him. Whatever Valérie’s reason, that decision indebts Jef to the jazz musician, for he is governed by a code of honor greater than his own self-interest. Jef’s internal sense of ethics trumps his contract and paves the way for the film’s iconic ending.

“There is no greater solitude than that of the samurai, unless it is that of the tiger in the jungle, perhaps,” announces an opening quotation attributed to “Bushido (Book of the Samurai).” Come to find, Melville made up the line, much as he did Joan McLeod’s “The Ronin,” from which he claimed to have adapted the story. No such novel exists. And yet, Melville was clearly inspired by Eastern philosophy, especially the code by which samurai put others’ lives before their own. Variations on this theme echo throughout his filmography.

At the same time, Melville’s most ardent obsession was American cinema. “Obsessed” isn’t a strong enough word to describe his infatuation with Hollywood movies, as Melville — who sported a Stetson hat and sunglasses behind the wheel of his Ford Galaxy convertible — screened multiple films a day, cataloging them in his mind. Melville maintained a list of 63 prewar American directors whom he revered (to make the cut, they need only have made one film he truly adored), weaving homages to many of them into his own work. Long before Quentin Tarantino made it fashionable to make genre-movie pastiches, Melville was stealing and remixing elements that had impressed him. As such, “Le Samouraï” represents a cross between American crime films and Eastern chivalry, transposed to the streets, subways and shadier corners of Paris.

What may read as Zen-like to some could just as easily be described as Melville’s attempt to achieve what Alfred Hitchcock called “pure cinema”: telling a story visually, without dialogue. In “Le Samouraï,” many scenes unfold wordlessly, with little more than jazz music or the chirp of the protagonist’s pet bullfinch on the soundtrack. What’s more, Melville meticulously limited the palette, describing his nearly monochromatic aesthetic as “black and white in color” (that approach extended even to the caged bird in Jef’s apartment: Melville cast a female bullfinch, since they had more muted colors than the species’ orange-breasted males).

Released the same year as “Bonnie and Clyde,” “Le Samouraï” is in many ways the yin to that film’s yang. The American gangster picture represents an attempt by New Hollywood talents to follow what the directors of France’s Nouvelle Vague had introduced overseas, whereas Melville (whose independent spirit had inspired critics such as Jean-Luc Godard and François Truffaut to become filmmakers) was more of a classicist, taking his cues from American film noir. Jef Costello’s silhouette — the dark fedora and the pale gray raincoat cinched at the waist, with its sharp upturned collar — was lifted directly from Alan Ladd’s look in “This Gun for Hire.” The assassin’s white gloves were a personal addition of Melville’s (film editor’s gloves, which practically all his killers wear).

Apart from the piercing stare of his icy blue eyes, Delon appears almost passive through much of the picture, to the extent that French critics dismissed “Delon’s vacant face” (Le Nouvel Observateur”) as being “as boring as a piece of wood” (Positif). In fact, there’s an alertness to his gaze that conveys the character’s coiled-spring potential. He’s an intensely focused professional whose every move seems to be in service of the job at hand. In the opening scene, we see him lying in bed in a dingy gray apartment, so still he might go unnoticed if not for the puffs of smoke from his cigarette. (A disorienting camera move, in which Melville tracks and zooms in opposite directions, suggests a certain schizophrenia in the character.)

Melville had courted Delon on two previous projects, but the star had declined both roles. Now, as the director told film critic Rui Nogueira, “The reading took place at his apartment. With his elbows on his knees and his face buried in his hands, Alain listened without moving until suddenly, looking up to glance at his watch, he stopped me: ‘You’ve been reading the script for seven and a half minutes now and there hasn’t been a word of dialogue. That’s good enough for me. I’ll do the film. What’s the title?’ ‘ Le Samourai ,’ I told him. Without a word he signed to me to follow him. He led me to his bedroom: all it contained was a leather couch and a samurai’s lance, sword and dagger.”

In writing the role for Delon, the filmmaker had intuited something fundamental about the actor’s persona. For his part, Delon stripped back what audiences were accustomed to seeing from a star to a bare minimum: no backstory, no psychology, composing his performance of deliberate, efficient gestures (drawing his gun, straightening the brim of his Borsalino) and the subtlest of micro-expressions. That choice, along with the character of Jef Costello, has since proven unquantifiably influential — even if the film itself wasn’t released in the U.S. until 1972. It shaped the way James Caan played the title role in Michael Mann’s “Thief,” and explains Ryan Gosling’s poker-faced turns in the Nicolas Winding Refn thrillers “Drive” and “Only God Forgives.” David Fincher’s ”The Killer” amounts to a satirical spin on that same archetype, as Michael Fassbender fills the silences with his character’s inane interior monologue.

After the shooting, Jane is called into police headquarters by the inspector (François Périer), and she sticks to the story Jef gave her. In most of Melville’s movies — nearly all of which explore complex homosocial dynamics — female characters are incidental to the unspoken codes between men, whether it be partners in crime or adversaries on opposing sides of the law. Not so in “Le Samouraï.” Apart from the shady garage operator who supplies Jef with fresh plates and a firearm, the only people loyal to Jef are women. Later, in a distinctly Melvillian twist, the cops confront Jane at home, aiming to pressure her into changing her testimony. “In other words, you want me to perjure myself, in return for which I’ll be left alone. But if I stick to the truth and get in your way, then I won’t hear the end of it. Is that it?” she challenges the inspector. (Just as telling, when two officers break in and bug Jef’s apartment, Melville depicts another way in which the police bend the law.)

The blurring of the lines between right and wrong, crime and justice, run throughout Melville’s oeuvre. In his next film, 1969’s “Army of Shadows” — which did not receive a proper American release until 2006, at which point it topped The Village Voice’s annual critics’ poll — French Resistance fighters are constantly making tough moral choices. And in his next collaboration with Delon, 1970’s “Le Cercle Rouge,” the inspector blackmails a tight-lipped source by falsely arresting his son, only to have the young man kill himself in jail. Summarizing Melville’s own philosophy, the police chief in that film says, “All men are guilty. They’re born innocent, but it doesn’t last.”

Coming out of the Resistance himself, Melville had comrades in both law enforcement and the criminal underworld. He understood the complexity of both milieus, and didn’t hold people to the same standards that the justice system might. A man’s worth was defined by his actions, and even hoodlums ought to behave with honor. That explains the choice Jef makes in the film’s inevitable yet surprising finale, a twist that proves every bit as calculated in its construction as his earlier double alibi. As Melville revealed to Nogueira, “The moment a man tells you ‘I was wrong,’ I think he is completely, absolutely pardoned for his wrongs.” And so, his climactic act should be read as a symbolic form of seppuku, a poetic self-sacrifice through which this coldblooded killer ultimately redeems himself.

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Critic’s Notebook

O.J., Made in America, Made by TV

In O.J. Simpson’s life and trials, television was a spotlight, a microscope and a mirror.

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By James Poniewozik

One of the strangest quotes I can remember associated with O.J. Simpson came from the broadcaster Al Michaels during the notorious freeway chase in 1994. Michaels, a sports commentator now covering the flight from the law of one of America’s biggest celebrities, said that he had spoken with his friend Simpson on the phone earlier. “Al,” Michaels recalled him saying, “I have got to get out of the media business.”

For a man who was about to be arrested and charged with the murder of his ex-wife, Nicole Brown Simpson, and her friend, Ron Goldman, it was an odd statement. But it was accurate. Simpson, during and after his pro football career, was a creature of the media business. With the freeway chase, and the acrimonious trial on live TV, he would essentially become the media business. Simpson, who died Wednesday at age 76, was one of the most-seen Americans in history.

What did people see when they looked at O.J. Simpson? A superstar, a killer, a hero, a liar, a victim, an abuser, an insider, a pariah — often many of these at once. In his fame and infamy, he was an example of what celebrity could make of a person and a symbol of what the media could make of a country.

Simpson’s football career made him a TV star in itself, as he became the first N.F.L. running back to rush for more than 2,000 yards in a season, with the Buffalo Bills. But he found his way into mass-market stardom during the commercial breaks, doing endorsements for RC Cola , Chevrolet and, most famously, Hertz rental cars.

As the documentary “O.J.: Made in America” would later detail, race was a subtext of Simpson’s fame, even in his pitchman days. There was a sense of social relief in having white America, after the civil-rights battles of the 1960s, embrace a charismatic Black star. It felt good for the country to like O.J.

But it also required a complex negotiation, particularly in his most famous ad campaign, for Hertz. There was anxiety over how white viewers would take the image of a powerful Black man running through an airport — would it be thrilling or threatening? The commercials made sure to include white onlookers cheering “Go, O.J., go!” as if to validate his passport to mainstream stardom.

Acting roles followed, in “Roots,” the “Naked Gun” movies, the early HBO sitcom “First and Ten.” His fictional and pitchman roles would play up his image of innocuous charisma — an image that would echo surreally in his televised trial and the public reaction to it.

The murder case would show electronic media’s power to bring a country together and to rip it apart. The low-speed chase on the Southern California freeway was one of those where-were-you-when monoculture moments, like an earthbound perversion of the moon landing. It happened on a Friday night, interrupting Game 5 of the N.B.A. finals, riveting tens of millions of viewers, none of them — at home or in the broadcast studios — knowing if they were about to witness a death on live TV.

But amid this classic mass-media, global-village moment, there were signs that the case was already becoming something more surreal and disjointed, a macabre carnival that would consume TV. People showed up on the freeway with signs and cheers, as if to an N.F.L. playoff game. A prank caller , evidently a Howard Stern fan, got on the air on ABC and saluted the anchor Peter Jennings with a hearty “Baba Booey.”

The trial, once it began, was the biggest series on TV, although even that feels like an understatement. What part of TV, in 1994 and 1995, wasn’t the O.J. Simpson trial? It was “The Tonight Show,” “Larry King Live” and Norm Macdonald’s “Weekend Update” on “Saturday Night Live.” It was the first topic of conversation in the morning and the last, on cable news, at night. It inspired a “Seinfeld” episode and a fantasy sequence on “Roseanne” in which the prosecutor Marcia Clark (Laurie Metcalf) crawls out of the TV to talk to Roseanne Conner (Roseanne Barr), who provides her with the missing murder weapon.

The trial was all TV. It was every kind of TV. It was a soap opera. It was a legal thriller. It was an interactive whodunit before the age of murder podcasts. It was a social drama that exposed racial chasms and the flaws of the legal system. It was a dark comedy with buffoons, villains and comic-relief figures.

It was a tragedy too, of course, and viewers could not agree which part of it was a tragedy, and that too was the tragedy.

It was also a preview of coming attractions. It was the model for the all-in immersion coverage that 24-hour news would apply to everything from wars to missing-persons cases to sex scandals. All-O.J.-all-the-time would seamlessly become all-Clinton-Lewinsky-all-the-time, complete with legal commentators reprising their roles.

But even as the Simpson case showed the media’s power to plunge us all into the same story, it also revealed how different communities could inhabit different realities. We could watch the same trial, with the same testimony, but disagree not just on the proper verdict but on the stakes of the case.

It was open-and-shut or it was built on fraud. It was about domestic violence against women or it was about racism. It was about how the rich and famous were above the law or about how Black defendants were beneath it. It was about the crimes of a person or the crimes of a system.

Like the home audiences caught reacting to the verdict, some cheering and some wailing, we would become a split-screen nation. Eventually, with TV news augmented by partisan outlets and social media, people would come to many more stories — elections, wars, pandemics — encased in their own ecosystems, listening to their own experts, believing their own facts.

As for the Simpson case, TV would eventually catch up with the more complicated reality. In 2016 both the “Made in America” documentary and the mini-series “The People v. O.J. Simpson: American Crime Story” laid out the case against Simpson as well as the trial’s racial-historical context. Taken together , they suggested that you could believe Simpson guilty without believing the system innocent.

Nuance and complexity are still possible. But they tend to work on the slow, patient timetable of history. As far as the daily news is concerned, on the other hand, we still live in the world that the Simpson trial created. This week, O.J. Simpson finally left the media business. The rest of us are stuck with it.

James Poniewozik is the chief TV critic for The Times. He writes reviews and essays with an emphasis on television as it reflects a changing culture and politics. More about James Poniewozik