A high-quality melodrama with a meaningful message and excellent actors, Nick Cassavetes’ “The Notebook” is sure to bring tears to the eyes of every female viewer, regardless of age. If it doesn’t, then you’re probably not the target audience. The film is made with that specific goal in mind, and its main virtue is that it’s okay to cry while watching it.
It’s understandable why it’s okay: it awakens those very blue dreams with which people begin their lives, only to usually end up turning the unfulfilled into bitter resentment. How sad.
The Story Within the Story
An interesting old man (James Garner) reads a love story from a manuscript to a beautiful old woman (Gena Rowlands) in a nursing home every day. The novel is quite traditional, but again, high-quality: neither the relationships nor the words are foolish, and yet they are typical. Most of the film is an adaptation of this manuscript. In 1940, in the rural American South, a young son of a poor farmer (Ryan Gosling) meets a young daughter of wealthy aristocrats (Rachel McAdams). They have a passionate summer romance, but then her mother (Joan Allen) separates them forever. He goes off to war, she becomes a student at a prestigious college and, like all aristocrats, works part-time in a hospital. There, she finds another suitor (James Marsden), much more suitable. He was seriously wounded, but also from a wealthy family, and after recovering, he becomes her fiancé. But, thankfully, in the 40s, it wasn’t customary to immediately rush to the registry office or jump into bed. The “engagement” lasted until the end of the war, and when the wedding was set, Ellie accidentally saw Noah, who had returned from the front, from a streetcar. He had just finished building a house after burying his father (Sam Shepard). He had promised to do so once. And so it began again…
Love, Loss, and Life’s Twists
What began, how it ended, what the details were – that would be a pure spoiler. One can only note a few witty lines along the way (“You can’t marry me, otherwise you won’t fulfill your main purpose – rebellion against parental authority”) and a few original twists (historical events are easily and quickly woven into the melodrama). The film is very compact, thanks to the fact that the adapted manuscript has reliable connections – Chopin’s C minor prelude and constant intercuts to the present day. Nevertheless, its essence is not in the melodrama “from the past.” What happens “now” in the nursing home is much more significant in terms of tear-jerking potential. Overall, the film is an adaptation of Nicholas Sparks’ bestseller, and Sparks quite accidentally found what Chekhov lamented the absence of. Chekhov wrote to Tolstoy something along the lines that “all novels always end either with the death of the hero or his departure. And try to find a third way out”… Despite all the traditional elements of “The Notebook,” this third way out is there and is capable of elevating “women’s novels” to the rank of good literature.
Directorial Choices and Personal Connections
Oddly enough, it is precisely the significance of the dramatic find that reveals a certain directorial weakness. The director followed commercial interests, that is, everything is clear and beautiful, as the wide audience likes. But the dramaturgy offered the opportunity to do everything for real – truthfully, as it happens in memory. Then the 40s should not be glossy, but murky and much more stylized. The 40s should primarily be the work of the brain, of vision, that is, of the cinematographer and lighting technicians, and not of the set designers and costume designers. Alas. Although, however, the losses from this weakness are not so great, since the film has an additional bonus. An outsider wouldn’t know, but it’s quite well known that Nick Cassavetes is the son of the actress Gena Rowlands and, accordingly, John Cassavetes. The parents married as aspiring artists back in 1954. John successfully starred in detective films until he got tired of it, Gena, until the same thing – unsuccessfully and in silly comedies. Their firstborn, Nick, was born in '59 (they had four children in total). In the 60s, John abruptly changed his profession and became one of the legendary American avant-garde filmmakers, the “underground” (“Shadows” (1959)). Gena stayed home with the children. And in the early 70s, he reclassified himself from “underground” to normal Hollywood directors in order to finally film his wife. She was already forty, her appearance was unconventional, but her husband turned his wife into not just a movie star, but a recognized actress (“A Woman Under the Influence” (1974), “Gloria” (1980)). In 1989, John Cassavetes died at the pitiful age of 60, which no one expected. Only after that did his firstborn, Nick, follow in his father’s footsteps, also filming his mother and constantly making melodramas (“She’s So Lovely” (1997)). He tries to figure out where such relationships come from, how they develop, and what they are like, like those of his own parents.
Knowing the personal backstory, you perceive “The Notebook” even more favorably. The last explanation – the entire ensemble cast of the melodrama raises its rank. James Garner is a legend of the 60s, the former Maverick, whose role Mel Gibson repeated decades later, inviting Garner as a senior comrade in the remake. Ryan Gosling is the very “Believer” (2001) who impressed the Moscow Film Festival just a few years ago and won the Grand Prix. Sam Shepard is not only an actor, but a famous playwright, a Pulitzer Prize winner, Joan Allen (“The Contender” (2000), “The Bourne Supremacy” (2004)) – a three-time Oscar nominee.
Only Rachel McAdams, the young heroine, has unfortunately shone in only silly comedies so far (“The Hot Chick” (2002), “Mean Girls” (2004)). Well, so now it’s up to her to find her own John Cassavetes.