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The Notebook
Release Date: June 25, 2004
Studio: New Line Cinema
Director: Nick Cassavetes
Screenwriter: Jeremy Leven
Starring: James Garner, Gena Rowlands, Joan Allen, Ryan Gosling,
Rachel McAdams, James Marsden, Heather Wahlquist
Genre: Drama
MPAA Rating: PG-13 (for some sexuality)
Official Website:
TheNotebookmovie.com
Plot Summary: Based on the acclaimed best
seller by Nicholas Sparks and directed by Nick Cassavetes ("John Q"), "The
Notebook" is an epic love story starring Academy Award nominees James Garner,
Gena Rowlands and Joan Allen opposite young breakout actors Ryan Gosling and
Rachel McAdams. As a man (Garner) reads from a faded notebook to the woman (Rowlands)
he regularly visits, his words bring to life the story of a couple (Gosling and
McAdams) who are separated by World War II, then passionately reunited 7 years
later, after they have taken different paths. Though her memory has faded, his
words give her the chance to relive her turbulent youth and the unforgettable
love they shared.
Reviewed by Peter
Veugelaers © 2004
- Take a pot shot but be warned
Dramatic middle
does not have legs
The
Notebook, based on the Nicholas Sparks’s novel,
has a promising premise, a movie that has authentic teenage characters falling
in love. This has an intense emotional edge of raw and real feelings, and those
of an ethereal substance, but when the drama is hot it turns lukewarm.
Consider the material, some of which is engaging drama.
The
perky Allie (Rachel McAdams) and the serious Noah (Ryan Gosling) start a dreamy
summer love which happens all very suddenly. That has been seen before in
Hollywood cinema in various ways – the guy gets the girl in spite of her
protestations, but she really does love him underneath.
There are class distinctions between Noah and Allie circa the rural South,
1940s. Allie contests her parent’s dreams for her – to be higher educated at a
New York school – while she wants to settle down with Noah at a house by a lake
he’s inherited.
He serves in World War II while she gets engaged to a soldier (James Marsden)
into the same social class, but would sooner marry down, such as marry her
summer love.
This storyline is interwoven with an elderly man (James Garner) reminiscing
over the Noah and Allie love story from his notebook (told in flashbacks) to the
ears of a dementia sufferer, played by Gena Rowlands.
The Garner and Rowlands affair is a dead duck, like a dreary bedtime story,
only worthwhile as a support for the second plot involving Gosling and McAdams.
Between Garner and Rowland’s characters nothing appears at stake, except this
affable retelling. Until the explanation of how these stories work together.
The absorbing and involving middle with war, sex, family conflict, status
anxiety, and angst, comes before this revelation. Speculation is satisfied but
comes too early and weakens the drama and suspense of the young couple’s
developing story and disaffects the Garner-Rowlands set-up, which are both
connected. The two sets of circumstances create distance and they intersect
jarringly although both have an intimate relationship.
The performances and characterisations are strong, which bulwarks and sustains
the well scripted and directed middle, including support from Marsden and Sam
Shepherd (Noah’s father) and Joan Allen is perfect as Allie’s mother.
Gosling and McAdams are sincere, sympathetically directed by Nick Casevettes (John
Q), son of the late independent director John (Husbands). The
romantic attachment is more intelligently represented in several scenes and
images than in some callow Hollywood movies, expressing the ethereal nature of
first love; however the effect is more smooch than profundity or beauty.
Garner and Rowlands, who are pivotal to the story, don’t have the emotional
quality and strong dramatic portraiture that the young actors do. The montage
edit at the end communicates, but apart from seeing Garner’s anguished look over
Rowland’s deteriorating health, there is not a compelling empathising with them. |
