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Homework Help: English: Books, Novels & Plays: The Notebook
by Felicia Davis
The Notebook is an achingly tender film about the enduring power of love, a story of miracles that will stay with you forever. This film is about falling in love and looking back on it.
This film starts out with an older gentleman named Duke (James Garner) regularly visits senile Allie (Gene Rowlands) in her hospital room and divert her with a romantic tale of young love that he reads from a notebook. Later in this story we realizes that not only is Allie senile she also suffers from Alzheimer’s. This story was based on two young people falling in love, one who is a poor country boy name Noah and the other is a wealthy rich girl name Allie. Noah and Allie falls in love during one heated summer romance, but is eventually faced with her parents’ disapproval. This summer romance came to an abrupt end when Allie’s ambitious mother and loving father learn that their daughter is hanging out with a poor working-class boy and ships her off out of town away from Noah. Brokenhearted, Noah writes to her everyday for a whole year. She never writes him back because Allie’s cold- hearted mother intercepts and when she checks the mail and see that Noah wrote her daughter, she hides all the letters as if Allie never received it. After a year of not hearing from Allie, Noah enlists in the military.
The Notebook begins with the story of Noah Calhoun, a rural Southerner who returned home to the North Carolina in 1946 from World War II. Noah, thirty-one, is restoring a plantation home to its former glory, and he is haunted by plenty of images of the girl that he met fourteen years earlier. (Allie) Allie was a girl that he loved like no other girl. Unable to find her, yet he was unwillingly to forget the summer they spent together. Noah is content to live with only her memories until she unexpectedly returns to his town to see him once again.
However, Allie is now twenty-nine years old, and is now engaged to another man, but realizes that the original passion she felt for Noah has not gone away with course of time. Nevertheless, the obstacles that once ended their previous relationship remain, and the river between their worlds is too broad to ignore. With her future marriage only weeks away, Allie is forced to deal with her hopes and dreams for the future, a future that only she can mold.
Like an enigma, the story of Noah and Allie is just the beginning. As it unfolds, their tale phenomenally becomes something different, with much higher stakes. The result is a deeply moving picture of love itself, the compassionate moments and the fundamental changes that have an effect on us all.
Even though romance is a tough nut to crack I think that this film manages to capture its pure essence with innocence and vulnerability in full tow, not to mention a hefty dose of chemistry between the two lovebirds. These two inspiring actors offer a powerful, well done performance. I give ten stars to this movie even though there is only a maximum of five, this is how much I truly adore this movie. The humor in this love story is beyond what I have I imagined. You can feel the all the love and excitement of being in love. This shows reality- based trials and tribulations that most unwanted couples go through on a daily basis. Especially, when the parents are totally against your relationship from the start. Noah (Ryan Gosling) , usually plays a creepy guy in movies, but in this film he is playing a romantic guy and to me he pulled it off well. I have to say that I fell for every sweet moment (their initial meeting, their love-making sequence, their possible break-up, etc.), every romantic gesture (the amusement park, the boat ride through the geese filled-pond, etc.). Even though I did predict some of the movie, the movie was still a great touching tear- jerker for me.
I bet you would like to know how this movie ends, anyways, the old guy continues to read the story to the very mature senile lady, and she starts to recall some of the story. All of the suddenly she starts to remember, everything became clearer to her. She remembers that young woman that the old guy was reading about was her and the elderly guy was her husband. They were the young in-love couple. The old guy that would read to her was her husband, and he would read to her to help her remember who he was and how much they loved each other. As you can see she did not marry the other guy that her parents had agreed for her to marry, she married her first true love.(Noah). However that is not all, even though she remembered who her husband was and what he had meant to her, she would only remember this for five minutes, and then she forgets again. So she had to stay in this nursing home and her husband would stay by her side. He would stay in the nursing home too. He was not allowed to stay in the same room with her but he was allowed to stay in the same facility because unfortunately due to the all the stress, he has a severe heart problem because of all the stress caused by his wife’s illness. Early one morning he creeps into his wife’s room, at that time she remembers him for some strange reason. She told him that she missed him and she asked him if their love was strong enough to allow them to live together through all eternity, he said yes. They both kissed each other and lied down next to her and they both died together. I get chills even thinking about this. I asked myself can this really happen? My husband and I watched this movie together and we both cried. This was just too touching I can watch this over and over again and no matter how many times I watch this, I shed a few tears each time.
According to Chicago Sun Times , they states that this movie is a tear jerker, a good one. According to the New York Post they states that this movie is almost unforgettable. According to the Chicago Tribune they say that the movie is quite believable and poignant. I agree with all of these movie critics.
I really appreciate the fact that once in this lifetime a girl actually follows her heart instead of security. This movie has given me hope in believing that I have found my true love. This was a well-needed movie.
Homework Help: English: Books, Novels, and Plays
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