Review

Review Date: 27-June-04
Spoiler Rating: Low
Juju Judgment: Juicy

The Notebook (2004)

Judging by the trailer, I commented a few weeks back that Nick Cassavetes' summer romance "The Notebook" appeared not to have a single original concept or scene. When I saw the movie anyway, I learned that my prediction was true, but I was also reminded that love stories contain familiar elements because sometimes they really work. Elements, for example, like nostalgia for a bygone era; a boy from the wrong side of the tracks and a girl from wealth and privilege; the disapproving parent and the temptation of the other man; coming apart at the seams and getting caught out in the rain; and, of course, a passion that never, ever dies. "The Notebook" has all of these things, and what makes them succeed where they have often failed is the sincerity with which they are depicted by Cassavetes and his young stars, Ryan Gosling and Rachel McAdams.

Gosling has started a promising career by playing psychopaths ("The Believer," "Murder by Numbers"), and here he lends his weight to making the audience share the innermost cravings of Noah Calhoun, a simple Southern boy who seeks little from life materially but everything emotionally. His ambition finds its focus the second he lays eyes on Allie Hamilton, a belle from the city whose pampered upbringing has made her somewhat unadventurous but seductively carefree. As Allie, McAdams has the requisite face and figure of a cover girl, but her ease with emotions both high and low (combined with a marvelous dimpled grin) allows her to hold her own opposite Gosling's Method-actor-on-the-move intensity. (While she's consistently lovely, he's initially cute and then desperately sexy as Noah moves into his scruffy, mad-at-the-world phase.) Cassavetes allows them several blissfully uncluttered scenes to flirt, to spar, and to make love, and together Gosling and McAdams turn everything about Noah and Allie into the real thing --- even if we've seen it all before. Indeed, the only moment that really feels stilted involves an unnecessary and late-coming digression into the relationship between Allie and her brittle, overbearing mother (Joan Allen). (Well, that and an editing blooper that has Allie arriving on a bike but leaving in a car.)

The story of "The Notebook" is told in flashbacks by James Garner as an aging grandfather who reads to a woman with dementia (Cassavetes' beautiful mother, Gena Rowlands) in a nursing home. As in "The Bridges of Madison County," which is probably the finest example of this genre, the modern-day scenes feel like unwanted intrusions upon the important matters at hand; yet, unlike in "Bridges," they actually lead somewhere. Having detailed the obstacles that characterize great loves and dealt with each one in turn, the story boldly turns to face the greatest obstacle of all. If any doubts might linger as to the unabashed, all-out, unwavering romanticism of "The Notebook," the ending would utterly rout them. This is the kind of movie we don't see much anymore, and the kind of movie I would have considered myself too jaded to enjoy. Yet because of the chemistry and natural ability of the actors, and the clean, straightforward approach of the director, it succeeds in portraying situations and emotions whose effect on the human heart cannot be diminished despite years or centuries of retelling.

Copyright © 2004 The Jujube (M. I. Kim). All rights reserved.