Sure everyone thinks all romance movies are the same, but for me that is not the case. This particular movie has driven me to find type of man depicted in the movie. Every time I sit down and watch it I find myself a blubbering fool at the end.
It has shown me how strong and everlasting love really is. From June 25, 2004 when it was first shown in theatres (which also happens to have been my first date,) straight through today, The Notebook has been my favorite movie. The setting of the movie is an older man who is reading to a elderly woman that lives in a nursing home due to Alzheimer’s.The love story reveals the woman as being Allie, but doesn’t reveal his identity of being Noah until the end.
Here is the short version of the story. While spending one summer with her wealthy parents at their second home, a young lady named Allie falls in love with a poor commoner Noah. Noah and Allie spend a magical summer together falling in love, but her parents and the socio-economic realities of the time period prevent them from being together. Allie’s overbearing parents rush to leave town to separate her from her new found love.
Although Noah writes a letter everyday to his dear love Allie, they all go unanswered. So after writing hundreds of letters, Noah professes his undying love for her in what will be his final letter sent. After serving in the war, Noah returns home and begins rebuilding an old farmhouse which he had brought Allie to the night before her family left town. A newspaper printed a story about his endeavor and catches Allie’s eye; so fourteen years after she last saw Noah she travels to the farmhouse to see him.
She’s engaged to another man, he’s materially rich, handsome, and has an amazing job. She fails to inform Noah of this and after spending two glorious days with him, she’s forced by her mother (who followed her to Noah’s) to choose which man she loves and will marry. The story comes to an obvious, but touching conclusion when Allie has a brief few minutes where she realizes the man reading to her is Noah and she is his wife Allie, then quickly relapses.After having almost a panic attack they calm her down, get her to sleep, and put her in a hospital bed in a private room where there are no visitors allowed.
Noah sneaks by the nurses station and climbs in to bed with his wife. When the nurse enters the room to check on Allie, she finds them both passed away, their hands still interwoven with each others. Do marriages still end with that much love between one another today? In today’s society can marriages last til death? Is love now based on feelings or of material pursuits to find happiness?
