Title: The Notebook
Writer: Nicholas Sparks
Director: Jeremy Leven
Major actors: Ryan Gosling, Rachel McAdams, James Marsden
Year released: 2004
Story: In a nursing home, an elderly man reads a romance story to a woman with dementia. The story is about two teenagers named Noah and Allie who fall deeply in love, however her parents do not approve of their relationship. Noah leaves to go serve in World War II, and it seems that the couple’s relationship is going to come to an end. While Noah is gone Allie meets another man and begins a relationship with him. Noah returns home, and it becomes apparent that a strong love connection is still very evident between the two of them. Allie has to choose between the man she is about to marry, and Noah.
Plot: The story is narrated from the present day by an elderly man in a nursing home who reads a romance story to an elderly woman. He reads the same story to her every day. The story is about a boy (Noah) and girl (Allie) who were very much in love, then were separated due to Noah going to off to serve in the war. While he is gone, Allie meets another man, and they fall in love. When Noah returns home from the war, he runs into Allie, and they form a connection once again. Allie has to choose between Noah and her fiancé’. She chooses Noah. In the present, it becomes clear that the elderly woman who is being read the story is in fact Allie, and the elderly man is Noah. She suffers from dementia, and each day Noah reads to her their love story, in hopes that perhaps it will spark her memory. While Noah is reading the story, Allie briefly regains her memory. At the onset of her dementia, Allie wrote the couple’s love story in a notebook and in it wrote “Read this to me, and I’ll come back to you.” But Allie soon relapses, and forgets who the man is that is reading her the story. She panics and has to be sedated. Meanwhile Noah suffers from a heart attack and has to be hospitalized. When Noah is released from the hospital, he visits Allie again. She questions him about what will happen when she loses her memory completely, and he reassures her that he will never leave her. After telling each other that they love one another, they lay down and go to sleep in Allie’s bed. The following day a nurse discovers that the couple died peacefully in bed together.
This film is presented non-linearly because it jumps back and forth from present to past. This aesthetic choice contributes to the general effect of the audience because it adds more meaning to the story and it pulls you in. The development of the characters Allie and Noah are impacted by the way in which the story is told because is adds significance being that the story is being told by Noah, who is a main character in the story. If the film had been presented differently, I feel it would have taken away from the significance of it. Being that he was telling the story first hand, it made it more interesting and gave it more meaning.
Resources
The Notebook (2004 film). (2015, March 17). In Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. Retrieved 03:08, March 19, 2015, from http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=The_Notebook_(2004_film)&oldid=651781815
Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S3G3fILPQAU
jaesmommyblog711 