I use two filters when assembling my film list. One, it can’t be a film I’ve seen before (or at least remembered) and two, it needs to be ‘culturally significant’—whatever that means. While that often includes films from classic eras or award shows, sometimes it just means getting harassed by my friends with a “wait, you haven’t seen THAT????” As is the case here, enter “The Notebook”.
In South Carolina, poor but persistent Noah (Ryan Gosling) woos the wealthy Allie (Rachel McAdams) in an endearing and young summer romance. Allie’s parents disapprove of Noah’s low-class and move Allie to New York. Noah writes Allie daily but after a year of no response and with the outbreak of WWII, he moves on. After WWII, Noah acquires and fixes up an old plantation house (as he pledged to Allie) but heartbroken, he falls into depression. Allie meets and becomes engaged to a dashing veteran. All is well for her until she learns of Noah and travels south to reunite with him. The two rekindle their romance and Allie forced is to choose between love and security.
If left here, it’s pretty clear that “The Notebook” would be another forgotten vanilla-romance movie. I found these ‘past’ sequences laden with all the shallow characters and nostalgia-porn of a Hallmark Channel Movie. Gosling’s character is meant to woo anyone who’s ever yearned for a clean-yet-rugged southern gentlemen to build them a house and make love to them after tearing off their rain-soaked clothing. I get it. It’s dessert. But I found the first hour to be pretty low stakes (at one point I looked at my watch and shouted, “C’mon! Gandhi knew what he was about 5 minutes in!”) and the second hour to be pretty generic.
What helps this film stand out a bit was the raw and grounding ‘modern day’ framing device. Like the “Princess Bride”, but depressing, the film is told by an elderly man (but in dire circumstances). Though I immediately guessed where these sequences were going, they were still pretty gutting (and would have remained so if not for the bullshit ending). It was those characters who I felt for and those characters I wanted to spend more time with. Indeed, for all my disgruntled disposition, I consider myself a romantic and was ready to enjoy this film. But for every moment of authentic, lifelong love was another with a Normal Rockwell-meets-a-CW-show scene of canned romance.
Happy Valentine’s Day, everyone!