The Notebook
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DVD Cover Information
Actor: Anthony-Michael Q. Thomas, Gena Rowlands, James Garner, Rachel McAdams, Ryan GoslingBrand: Warner Brothers
DVD: Region Code 1
Audio: English (Unknown), Dolby Digital 2.0 Stereo; English (Subtitled); Spanish (Subtitled); English (Original Language), Dolby Digital 2.0 Stereo
Format: AC-3, Closed-captioned, Color, Dolby, DVD, NTSC, Subtitled, Widescreen
Picture Format: Widescreen, 2.35:1
Running Time: 124 minutes
DVD Release Date: 2005-02-08
Audience Rating: PG-13 (Parental Guidance Suggested)
Studio: New Line Home Video
Product features:
- Condition: New
- Format: DVD
- AC-3; Closed-captioned; Color; Dolby; DVD; Subtitled; Widescreen; NTSC
Movie Reviews of The Notebook
Movie Review: Nothing compares 2 The Notebook
Summary: 5 Stars
The Notebook is a fantastic movie about an old woman with Alzheimer's disease (Allie) and her struggle to buy a notebook. If she doesn't have a notebook in which to write a reminder to purchase a notebook, how can a notebook be purchased? The film is deeply philosophical in respect to this paradox of memory, though as we shall see, The Notebook can also be interpreted as a metaphor for an entrance to the heart.
To help along the way is "Duke": an equally old but more mentally capable resident of Allie's nursing home. He reads Allie excerpts of her favourite novel - "Cliched Love Story" by Allan Smithee - on a daily basis, in the hope of improving her mental faculties. Unfortunately he cannot simply write the much desired and equally unobtainable shopping list, as he suffers from chronic arthritis in his hands, obtained after shooting many hundreds of Nazis in WWII. He also suffers from war flashbacks, which are represented at an abstract level by major and unexplained shifts in time within the film. Director, Nick Cassavetes, had originally filled these spaces with stock footage of the war coupled with original and insightful commentary from historians and military officers, however he was unfairly forced to cut these scenes in order to satisfy the studio's demands for a PG rating.
The bulk of the film consists of depictions of the events from within Smithee's novel. These concern a couple of young lovers - Noah & Allie - and the long and rocky road they must travel in order to achieve their long awaited goal of copulation. Allie's parents - wealthy entrepreneurs with a primary focus on the brothel industry - are concerned by Noah's lack of money, and, from a business perspective, simply cannot see what he has to offer their daughter. In a particularly impassioned scene, Allie screams that his money or lack thereof doesn't matter, that they are in love, and that her mother understands nothing of love. This is a subtle and poignant social commentary on the way in which capitalism can divorce us from our humanity.
Right when they are about to do the deed in a dusty old cottage, the police arrive and whisk Allie back to her parents who leave town with her the following day. Heartbroken, Noah writes Allie every day for a year. After he receives no response to the first hundred letters, he grows weary and simply sends her Hallmark cards, which eventually become unaffordable owing to the financial (and psychological) depression, and so he degenerates to just forwarding her his junk mail, circling items he feels she may enjoy. Contrasting the previous point, this is intended to illustrate how economy and emotionality are intertwined, and how economy seizes the opportunity to take over when emotion is weak.
None of his letters ever reach Allie as all 365 of them are collected and stored by her evil and manipulative mother. Allie never had a chance to see any of them owing to her deep and incurable fear of mail boxes, which requires a total dependence on others to engage with all aspects of the postal system on her behalf. Allie eventually meets some other guy whose name I don't remember and he is all like "Damn momma! You is hot!" and, charmed by his romanticism and exemplary command of the English language, she soon agrees to marry him. This man, played exceptionally by rapper "50 cent," is much more agreeable to Allie's parents owing to his wealth, consistently represented by the oversized piece of money he keeps on a gold chain around his neck at all times.
Years pass and, by a turn of fate, Allie happens to see a newspaper article with a picture featuring Noah standing outside that same dusty old house, however it is no longer dusty - it has been restored into a picturesque dwelling as if from a fairytale. Allie goes to visit. They exchange words. And I will stop here as I don't want to give away the emotional, unexpected and literally inexpressible ending; not even Cassavetes felt he could do it justice and so the last three minutes of the film simply consist of the video clip for Sinead O'Connor's cover of "Nothing Compares 2 U".
This is a fantastic film that connoisseurs of notebooks the world over will adore. 5/5
Summary of The Notebook
Behind every great love is a great story. Two teenagers from opposite sides of the tracks fall in love during one summer together, but are tragically forced apart. When they reunite 7 years later, their passionate romance is rekindled, forcing one of them to choose between true love and class order.When you consider that old-fashioned tearjerkers are an endangered species in Hollywood, a movie like The Notebook can be embraced without apology. Yes, it's syrupy sweet and clogged with clichés, and one can only marvel at the irony of Nick Cassavetes directing a weeper that his late father John--whose own films were devoid of saccharine sentiment--would have sneered at. Still, this touchingly impassioned and great-looking adaptation of the popular Nicholas Sparks novel has much to recommend, including appealing young costars (Ryan Gosling and Rachel McAdams) and appealing old costars (James Garner and Gena Rowlands, the director's mother) playing the same loving couple in (respectively) early 1940s and present-day North Carolina. He was poor, she was rich, and you can guess the rest; decades later, he's unabashedly devoted, and she's drifting into the memory-loss of senile dementia. How their love endured is the story preserved in the titular notebook that he reads to her in their twilight years. The movie's open to ridicule, but as a delicate tearjerker it works just fine. Message in a Bottle and A Walk to Remember were also based on Sparks novels, suggesting a triple-feature that hopeless romantics will cherish. --Jeff Shannon
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