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Saturday, July 31, 2010

The Notebook: Movie Review


The movie starts in a nursing home when an elderly man named Duke begins to read a love story from his notebook to a female fellow patient named Allie who is suffering ‘senile dementia’ where her memory is slipping from her more and more every day. Duke reads the story of two lovers who meet in the south at a carnival. Allie was 17 years old city girl and she came from a wealthy family background but Noah was just a country boy. The two spend the whole summer together but Allie is forced to move and go to college although she was willing to give it up for Noah. Noah writes Allie 365 letters but she never gets them so he restores the house him and Allie went to one night with hope that once Allie sees his picture and the house, she will be drawn back to him. Seven years passes and Allie meets and falls in love with a wealthy soldier Lon and is engaged. When seeing Noah's picture in the paper, Allie goes back to Seabrook with intention just to check whether Noah is okay or not but they spent a few days together and she doesn't want to leave. Allie has to choose between her fiancĂ© and Noah and on one day her mother came to the town and she gave her a bundle of letters from Noah which she has been hiding from Allie. Allie was confused and after seeing Lon at the hotel, she chooses to be with Noah and they were married. In present day, the old Allie has now retrieved her memories back and realized that the story Duke was reading was based on their love story and Duke is Noah, her husband but in a short time, she forgets about what had just happened. He goes to Allie's room later that night, and Allie remembers again. The next morning, a nurse finds them in bed together, having both died peacefully holding each other's hands.

The movie depicts the theme of love between an elderly couple and how the husband is willing to take care of the wife even though the process of getting her memories back is difficult. It is so hard to find a husband like Noah nowadays who still stay and be with her senile wife and this shows how strong their love bond is. This also shows that Allie has actually chosen the best man to be with her and share their love together and metaphorically they died together after Allie remembers all her memories.

In the movie, Allie’s fiancĂ© is portrayed as a wealthy soldier Lon Hammond Jr. but in the novel, Lon is actually a handsome, sophisticated and charming lawyer from old Southern money. The purpose of the filmmaker to do this was maybe to compare Noah Calhoun’s ordinary soldier life to Lon’s successful life. This was done to illustrate why Allie felt more secured when she was with Lon and also the approval of their marriage by Allie’s parents.

The filmmakers have made the best decision when they chose the role players for the movie because each of these actors is pitch-perfect and legendary. Ryan Gosling plays the character of young Noah Calhoun and James Garner as the present day Noah while Rachel McAdams plays the character of young Allie Hamilton and Gena Rowlands plays the characters of the elder Allie. “The Notebook” is a combination of young and veteran casts and all were evenly dispersed throughout. They managed to brings freshness to these characters and make the characters feel interesting and unique and they have shown their best act by having most of the audience broke down in tears at the end of the movie.

“The Notebook” does not exactly take much for the audience to guess how the story is going to develop and end. The movie will play on your emotions and will let you squeeze out a few tears but it is a movie that you can relax and let flow over you. It is also one of the few films out there that tell a complete story as there is a well-defined beginning, middle, and end for the movie. The audiences are not left with questions inside their head once they stepped out from the cinema because everything is well answered in the movie and that is the most interesting idea of the movie.

The plot and all the scenes in the movie move smoothly and it does not take much for the general idea of each scene to be understood. This is very important so that the audiences will get excited to finish the movie. There is also no scene that moves very slowly and this happens to keep the audiences chaired on their seats.

The language used in the movie is simple and concise. Every dialogue is well composed by the script writer and this movie is actually adapted by a novel written by Nicholas Sparks who also wrote remarkable novels such as ‘A Walk to Remember’ and ‘Dear John’. The present day Noah acts as a narrator who reads the notebook and he narrates the flow of the movie very well and the audience will be moved away with beautiful and meaningful quotations and lines from the movie.

This is a must-watch movie for love couples out there so do not miss your chance to see this movie and ponder about your own love story. It will entertain you for two hours and maybe after watching the movie, you can spend some time to read the novel.

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