The Notebook (2004)
Directed by: Nick Cassavetes
Adapted to a screenplay by: Jan Sardi and Jeremy Leven
Starring: Gena Rowlands (Allie Calhoun), James Garner (Duke), Kevin Connolly (Fin), Ryan Gosling (Noah), Heather Wahlquist (Sara Tuffington), Rachel McAdams (Allie), James Marsden (Lon), Sam Shepard (Frank Calhoun), Joan Allen (Anne Hamilton), David Thornton (John Hamilton), Starletta DuPois (Nurse Esther)
Robert Fraisse' photography is the best thing that The Notebook has going for it, especially the scene of the rower in the opening credits and the sequence of scenes in which Noah takes Allie out on the canoe to see the interim resting spot for hundreds of migrating fowl and they get caught in a heavy rain storm on their return.
The second best thing going for this film is the performances from the large ensemble cast. Despite the incongruities in the script, the acting was noteworthy and helped make the film bearable.
Inspired by Nicholas Sparks' best-selling novel, Nick Cassavetes' adaptation suffers most from incongruity. Let me throw out some points that had me scratching my head:
1. The casting director botched casting James Garner as Duke, the older Noah. (Ryan Gosling plays the young Noah.) Why? Ryan Gosling is blonde with a thin frame and James Garner is salt-and-pepper black and gray with a heavy build. I don't know any blonde person whose hair turns black when they age. James Garner looked more like Lon, the young veteran who Allie was engaged to. Besides, the older Noah should have looked more like Sam Shepard, who was well-cast as Noah's father Frank.
2. Where in the hell did the knickname Duke come from? To my recollection, no one in the film calls him Duke except the nursing staff and his wife in the closing moments of the film.
3. The evening Duke has a heart-attack, he opens the notebook (which is more like hard-covered journal or diary) and there is a preface by his wife Allie stating that if he reads her this story, she will come back to him. This gives the impression that Allie wrote the notebook. And if this is the case, it doesn't correlate at all with the Allie we see throughout the film. Noah is the writer and the reader of poetry. I don't recall Allie ever picking up a pen to write even a letter. If Noah did indeed write the story, the film didn't address why Allie wrote what she did in the preface of his story.
4. On their first date, Noah and Allie go out on a walk. Noah makes a comment saying that Allie seems to not have freedom to do what she wants, to think on her own. Well, this is a pretty stuipid thing to say since Allie was the one who (when they first met) unbuckled, unzipped, and pulled his pants down around his ankles as he hung helpless to defend himself. Don't you think? And then, Noah proceeds to lay down in the middle of the street and persuade her that she should lay in the street with him as evidence that she can make her own decision, which she ends up doing. By making that choice, isn't she following his edict, thus proving that she once again isn't thinking on her own?
5. Sometime in the middle of the film, Duke explains that Noah and Allie used to fight all the time because they were both so hard-headed and independent. Well, first, this flies in the face of Noah telling Allie that she doesn't think for herself. Second, we only see them fight three times, two of which do not count because the topic of their conversation warranted high emotions and comments that they both wish they could have taken back as soon as the spoke them. (On one occassion, Noah overheard Allies parents tell her that was not good enough for her so he broke off their relationship, which angered Allie. The second occassion was when Allie's fiance came into town to find Allie and Allie didn't know whether or not she was going to choose to stay with Noah or go with Lon. This angered Noah.)
On the contrary, both of these characters were very cordial, considerate, and respectful in most all their relations to each other and other people. IN all, this seemed lazy script writing to me, as if they said "Let's make our two main characters more complex by telling the audience that they fought all the time." Actions speak louder than words and their actions and words throughout the film spoke contrary to that judgement of them.
6. There were two holes in the conversation that took place between Duke and his doctor. First, Duke made the comment that religion trumps science in the end. This statement seemed so out of character for Duke-- he never once spoke about religion or God throughout the film. His conviction here stands out like a sore thumb. Second, he tells the doctor that he needs to go help Allie turn the page of the sheet music. (Allie is sight-reading, playing the piano.) This could have been written better or filmed better because Duke leaves Allie at a table when he goes to see his doctor. The impression we get is that Duke leaves the room and goes to a clinic in another area of the hospital. Besides, Allie goes to the piano after Duke leaves. So how does Duke know that no one is there to turn pages for her? Then we realize that the observation room in which Duke is meeting with his doctor is just off of this living area where the patients watch TV, play games, and play the piano.
7. When Noah's friend Fin dies before his eyes, Noah's reaction lacks the emotion of someone who has just lost a best friend.
There's more but I think you get the picture. It seems like the writers, filmmakers, editors, and directors could have storyboarded this film much better than they did. I assume that everyone wanted to stay as true to the book as possible, but in doing so, they became lazy and expected viewers to fill in the holes with information from the novel. In the end, it is an adaptation whose potential is evident but not fully achieved.
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