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| A young woman comes to the coastal town of Seabrook, North Carolina in the 1940’s to spend the summer with her family. Still in her teens, Allie Hamilton (Rachel McAdams) meets local boy Noah Calhoun (Ryan Gosling) at a Carnival. On the spot, Noah senses that he and Allie are meant to be together. Though she is a wealthy debutante and he a mill worker, over the course of one passionate
and carefree summer in the South, the two fall deeply in love. |
(2004) Film Review |
| This page was created on June 21, 2004
This page was last updated on
June 25, 2004
—Review
—Trailers, Photos
—About this Film
—Spiritual Connections
—Forum
Dial up modems will take a few moments |
| CREDITS |
|  Directed by Nick Cassavetes
Novel by Nicholas Sparks
Adaptation by Jan Sardi
Screenplay by Jeremy Leven
Cast (in credits order)
Rachel McAdams .... Young Allie Nelson
Ryan Gosling .... Young Noah Calhoun
Gena Rowlands .... Allie Nelson
James Garner .... Noah Calhoun
Joan Allen .... Allie's Mother
James Marsden
Heather Wahlquist .... Sara Tuffington
rest of cast listed alphabetically
Elizabeth Bond .... Secretary
Jamie Brown .... Martha Shaw
Patricia Buckley-Moss .... Dancer
Kevin Connolly
Nancy De Mayo .... Mary Allen Calhoun
Jennifer Echols .... Nurse Irene
Leslea Fisher .... Bow Girl
Michael D. Fuller .... Seabrook Boy #2
Sylvia Jefferies .... Rosemary
Eve Kagan .... Ellen
Todd Lewis .... Reporter
Cullen Moss .... Bodee
Lindy Newton .... Heather Lynn
Matt Shelly .... Seabrook Boy #1
Sam Shepard
David Thornton .... John Hamilton
Barbara Weetman .... Home buyer
Meredith Zealy .... Maggie Calhoun
Produced by
Toby Emmerich .... executive producer
Lynn Harris .... producer
Mark Johnson .... producer
Avram 'Butch' Kaplan .... executive producer
Original Music by Aaron Zigman
Cinematography by Robert Fraisse
Film Editing by Alan Heim
MPAA: Rated PG-13 for some sexuality.
For rating reasons, go to FILMRATINGS.COM, and MPAA.ORG.
Parents, please refer to PARENTALGUIDE.ORG |
| TRAILERS AND CLIPS |
| —Trailers, Photos |
| CD |
The Notebook
Various Artists - Soundtrack - 2004, Aaron Zigman
1. Main Title
2. Overture
3. "I'll Be Seeing You" Performed by Billie Holiday
4. "Alabamy Home" Performed by Duke Ellington
5. Allie Returns
6. House Blues/The Porch Dance/The Proposal/The Carnival
7. Noah's Journey
8. "Always And Always" Performed by Benny Goodman & His Orchestra
9. "A String Of Pearls" Performed by Glenn Miller & His Orchestra
10. On The Lake
11. "Diga Diga Doo" Performed by Rex Stewart And The Ellingtonians
12. "One O'Clock Jump" Performed by Benny Goodman & His Orchestra
13. "I'll Be Seeing You" Performed by Jimmy Durante
14. Noah's Last Letter
15. Our Love Can Do Miracles
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| BOOK |
The Notebook
by Nicholas Sparks
"Somewhere," muses Noah Calhoun, while sitting on his porch in the moonight, "there were people making love." Anyway, head elsewhere for Great Literature, but if you're in the market to get your heartstrings plucked, look no further. The Notebook, a Southern-fried story of love-lost-and-found-again, revolves around a single time-honored romantic dilemma: will beautiful Allison Nelson stay with Mr. Respectability (to whom she happens to be engaged), or will she hook
up with Noah, the romantic rascal she left so many years ago? We're not telling, but you have two guesses and the first one doesn't count. Decades later, after Allison develops Alzheimer's, her beau uses "the notebook" to read her the story of the great love she's plumb forgot. The Notebook--film rights already sold, thank you very much--is a little glazed doughnut of a book: sticky- sweet, satisfying, not much nourishment. But who cares? Take an extra vitamin and indulge. --This
text refers to the Hardcover edition.
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| POSTER |
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| SYNOPSIS |
 A young woman comes to the coastal town of Seabrook, North Carolina in the 1940’s to spend the summer with her family. Still in her teens, Allie Hamilton (Rachel McAdams) meets local boy Noah Calhoun (Ryan Gosling) at a Carnival. On the spot, Noah senses that he and
Allie are meant to be together. Though she is a wealthy debutante and he a mill worker, over the course of one passionate and carefree summer in the South, the two fall deeply in love.
Circumstances – and the sudden outbreak of World War II – drive them apart, but both continue to be haunted by memories of each other. When Noah returns home from the war years later, Allie is irrevocably gone from his life, but not from his heart.
Though Noah doesn’t yet know it, Allie has come back to Seabrook, where they first fell in love. But now Allie is engaged to marry Lon (James Marsden), a wealthy soldier she met while volunteering in a GI hospital.
Decades later, a man (James Garner) reads from a faded notebook to a woman (Gena Rowlands) he regularly visits at her nursing home. Though her memory has faded, she becomes caught up in the fiery story of Allie and Noah – and for a few moments, she is able to relive the passionate, turbulent time when they swore they’d be together always.
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 FAITH IN HOLLYWOOD
Feature Article by GREG WRIGHT
Pastor and Tolkien Scholar.
hjpastorgreg@hotmail.com
Greg is a writer and ordained minister of the dramatic arts. He is a contributing editor for Hollywood Jesus, and is author of Tolkien in Perspective: Sifting the Gold from the Glitter. |
The Notebook screenwriter Jeremy Leven tells an interesting tale -- his own. Prior to beginning his film career, Leven earned a graduate degree in Child Psychology from Harvard and was a Fellow in the Department of Child Psychiatry at the Yale University Medical School. He also served on the faculty of Harvard, was a hospital psychologist in Massachusetts and was the Director of Youth, Drug Treatment and Methadone Programs for Western Massachusetts.
To put himself through graduate school, he first wrote the novel Creator, which was later adapted into a screenplay for a high-profile film of the same name, directed by Ivan Passar and starring Peter O'Toole and Mariel Hemingway. During the same period, he also wrote the critically acclaimed Satan: His Psychotherapy and Cure by the Unfortunate Dr. Kassler, J.S.P.S (that is, "Just Some Poor Schmuck," according to Leven). The novel deals with a psychotherapist's sessions with the devil, who's "feeling unloved and misunderstood."
Over the years, Leven has kept up a high-profile relationship with Hollywood: Don Juan DeMarco (1995), The Legend of Bagger Vance (2000), Crazy as Hell (2002), Alex and Emma (2003). He even scored an almost unheard of coup, signing the legendary Marlon Brando to star in DeMarco, his directorial debut. And now, there's New Line Cinema's The Notebook.
How does this happen? Very simply, says Leven.
"I got a call from New Line. They were looking for someone to adapt the book. Actually, they sent me a script, and I looked at the script, and I heard what they wanted different. And I read the book, and I said, 'Let's go back to the book.'"
What Leven found in Nicholas Sparks' novel -- and what Leven told New Line they needed to tell -- is a story of faith.
New Line agreed. And they didn't approach Leven as an unknown quantity. "My novels," says Leven (and "a lot of my screenplays," he's quick to add), "basically deal with love and faith, and religion." So he assumes, when asked by a studio to write for them, that love and faith is what the studio is after, not something else. "That's all my work," Leven insists.
It comes through in The Notebook. In one key scene, Duke (James Garner) discusses the medical condition of Miss Hamilton (Gena Rowlands). The doctor is not optimistic, but Duke assures him that after science has had its go at treatment, "Then there's God."
"I'm glad they left that in there," says screenwriter Leven. "That's me. I'm glad I got it in."
Where does Leven find this kind of optimism? From his own Jewish faith, from the faith of his Catholic wife, and from real life.
"I had a patient in the hospital once," Leven relates, "who had no measurable blood pressure. Zero. There was no blood pressure that any of us could find. But his wife was an attorney, and she was in Chicago. And he held on for six hours while she flew back from Chicago, said goodbye and died."
Believe in love. Expect miracles. See The Notebook.
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 THE NOTEBOOK
Review by JENN WRIGHT
Jenn is a writer with degrees in literature and theology. She will be co-writing the Narnia coverage for Hollywood Jesus, which will be debuting the summer of 2004 in anticipation of the first movie's 2005 release. |
While there are no secrets about how the story will play out, The Notebook offers a beautiful tale well-told. It is a tale of love -- how it begins, how it works, how it ends... and doesn't end. In it we see a picture of an ideal -- a devotion, a loyalty, an unwavering commitment to love, honor, and cherish: in sickness and in health. Without the sap, without the obligatory jokes to dispel the tension. Just a simple picture of what love can be like, if we choose to make it so.
The story itself is incredibly moving. Anyone who has not been recognized by a parent or grandparent will relate to the tragedy of lost memory -- and the relational losses that necessarily follow. After all, how can you love someone you don't know anymore?
 And technically, the film is superb as well. A fine soundtrack complements the well-directed cinematography, while the four main actors -- Rachel McAdams and Ryan Gosling as the youthful Allie and Noah Calhoun, and Gena Rowlands and James Garner as the elderly couple -- bring to life a moving, believable love story that begins with wild passion, threatens to fall apart several times, yet ultimately concludes with a love and devotion that -- perhaps -- miracles are made of.
From the start, Gena Rowlands, who plays the dementia-afflicted Allie, maintains a blankness of expression that delicately illustrates the child-like oblivion of anyone suffering from a memory-stealing disease. Only in her moments of lucidity do we get a glimpse of her personality, her personhood. The change in her expression is so subtle -- a spark in the eye, little more -- that you may be left wondering how you knew she had connected with her memory before she spoke it.
 Likewise, both young actors, Rachel McAdams and Ryan Gosling, demonstrate masterful control over minute facial expressions, earning themselves numerous well-deserved close-ups, despite their relative inexperience on the big screen. Their passionate flare-ups -- in anger and desire -- remind us of our own volatility in young love, even down to the frustrated, not-so-playful love pats exchanged during their arguments.
And the venerable James Garner, portraying the elder Noah, has only improved with the years. He acts his age in this film, with all the attendant gentle wisdom, quiet patience, fierce love, and fragile heart that becomes a man who himself has loved long and loved deeply.
Yet for all the wistful romance of the story, beware: watching an old man's heart get broken by his lifelong sweetheart is gut-wrenching. Knowing that the man chooses to pay that awful price for the fleeting moments of blissful memory reminds us that love has a price, and it often involves excruciating pain endured in hopes of momentary exhilaration.
Yes, it's idealistic. But it's not unrealistic. We need to see more of this kind of relationship, where loyalty and devotion are admired as virtues, not treated as weaknesses. Where personal sacrifice on a grand scale is portrayed in all its excruciating splendor. Where love is a choice, and commitment is forever, and a miracle is in the eye of the rememberer -- even if it's only for five eternally brief minutes... |
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