Movie of the Week: The Notebook

"A poor and passionate young man falls in love with a rich young woman and givers her a sense of freedom.  They soon are separated by their social differences." IMDb

In my opinion there are two ways to enjoy this movie.  I will start with the more traditional way. 

Number 1: This way assumes that you are a typical, healthy minded person who can appreciate the heart behind this story.  It is kind of a classic tale that we've heard before.  Two young people from different social classes fall in love, but are torn apart because of circumstance and societal pressures.  They grow up to be different people, but in the end find each other again and realize that love concurs all.  It's a bit like Titanic without that whole disaster thing, or better yet, Aladdin without a genie are anything.  This movie is slightly different because the story is sort of, in a way, told twice because it's being told in flashbacks.  The present is an old man reading the flashback story to an old woman with dementia. We find out along the way that the old man and woman are actually the two characters in the flashbacks.  He reads her the same story every day in hopes that, just like in the flashback story, the circumstances will be mended and she will come back to him once again.  In the end, she does remember who he is and how much they love each other and they end up passing away in each others arms.  Awwww, how touching.

Number 2: In order to enjoy the movie in this way, a couple of other things might have to be in place, or rather out of place in your own life.  I learned to enjoy The Notebook in this fashion in college.  Let me set the stage for you.  I had been going through what we'll call relationship issues, and I had been doing a fair bit of drinking.  Now, my college had a movie channel that would replay the same line-up of movies every day at the same time of day for a month.  At this particular time, the network happened to be playing The Notebook every day at around 2 pm, which would be right around the time I would wake up from the bender I had been on the night before.  For lack of anything better or more constructive to do, I would put on this movie and enjoy it very much.  Here is why. When viewed from a bitter, angry, dead inside type state of being, the movie can be summed up rather quickly: Two attractive people who are supposed to be in love with each other spend most of their time on screen arguing, fighting, in misery, confused, or in pain.  Then at the end, they fucking die.  Good!

Either way, solid 3 stars.