10 Harsh Realties Of Rewatching The Notebook, 20 Years Later

Summary

Noah manipulates Allie into a relationship, setting a toxic tone from the start.
Allie’s treatment of Lon shows a lack of respect and betrayal of trust.
The story’s overlooked classism, sexism, and lack of diversity are glaring issues.

SCREENRANT VIDEO OF THE DAY

Good essay

SCROLL TO CONTINUE WITH CONTENT

You are watching: 10 Harsh Realties Of Rewatching The Notebook, 20 Years Later

Most rom-com fans would be hard-pressed to say there aren’t plenty of redeeming qualities of The Notebook, but after 20 years, there are some harsh realities of rewatching the movie that can’t be ignored. Based on the book by Nicholas Sparks, released in 1996, The Notebook was adapted into a feature film starring Ryan Gosling and Rachel McAdams as the central couple, Noah and Allie, in 2004. In the years since the movie’s release, it’s only grown in popularity and notoriety, as its influence is everywhere. However, popularity breeds criticism, especially when viewed through the lens of the 2020s.

The romance, 1940s aesthetics, and forbidden love all contributed to the iconic nature of the film, and it’s unlikely that viewers will give up on the story.

The Notebook movie made changes to the book, as most films based on Sparks’ novels usually do, but the heart and soul of the narrative remained the same: Allie and Noah’s love story. The romance, 1940s aesthetics, and forbidden love all contributed to the iconic nature of the film, and it’s unlikely that viewers will give up on the story. However, understanding the issues and pitfalls of The Notebook will only allow new interpretations of the novel to grow. Recently, the stage musical based on the book has made waves with its inclusion and diversity after the film was reevaluated.

10 Noah Manipulates Allie Into Going Out With Him

The infamous carnival scene cements Noah as a terrible partner.

Most scientists, experts, and regular people agree that there’s no such thing as love at first sight, but rom-coms refuse to let the trope die. Noah appears to experience something similar to this, but it makes him act manipulative and disgustingly toward Allie. He follows her around the carnival after she explicitly tells him she’s not interested and that she’s there with someone else. However, he doesn’t take no for an answer, setting the tone for the remainder of their relationship.

Noah climbs onto the Ferris wheel while Allie’s riding it and threatens to let go and injure himself unless she agrees to go out with him. Despite this being the action of someone with no regard for the agency of the person they’re pursuing, the movie frames this as a grand romantic gesture. Throughout the story, Noah’s manipulation doesn’t stop there, and Allie is pushed around emotionally based on what he wants and needs. Not to mention that after this intense beginning, he spends their first dates insulting her.

9 Allie Treats Lon Terribly

She should not have been rewarded for disregarding the man who loved her.

Many criticisms of The Notebook are lodged against Noah, and rightfully so, but Allie isn’t a perfect character either. Her relationship with Lon (James Marsden) is one of the only healthy examples of love in the entire story until Allie throws it away for a man who treats her terribly. It’s true that Allie had been harboring feelings for Noah for many years, and she was robbed of her chance for closure because her mother stole the letters. However, this doesn’t give her an excuse to cheat on Lon and betray his trust.

His decency makes it easy to dislike Allie and Noah for their selfish actions and for the audience to root for him.

To make matters worse, Lon is completely understanding and kind when Allie reveals to him what happened, and all he asks is that she comes back to him if she wants to. It’s difficult to imagine Noah reacting so well if the roles were reversed, and it’s clear that Allie knows this. Lon is painted in a remarkably flattering light by the movie. His decency makes it easy to dislike Allie and Noah for their selfish actions and for the audience to root for him. Throughout the story, it’s Lon who helps Allie through her lowest points, not Noah.

8 Allie’s Mother Shouldn’t Have Married Allie’s Father

Her story is one of the saddest and most misunderstood parts of the movie.

It’s easy to characterize Allie’s parents as the villains, but in reality, it’s much more complicated than that. They do keep Allie away from Noah and have terribly outdated ideas about love and relationships, but Allie’s mother, Anne (Joan Allen), has a complex backstory. After Allie has her affair with Noah, Anne finally reveals that she, too, had a relationship with a man her family didn’t find suitable and that she still thinks about him to this day. When viewed through this lens, it’s clear that Anne was trying to save Allie from the lifetime of heartbreak she faced.

While this doesn’t forgive everything that Anne did, it does provide the necessary context and paints Allie’s father as an even clearer antagonist. It’s devastatingly sad to learn about what happened to Anne, and her story drives home the idea that these controlling behaviors among families are cyclical. Upon a rewatch, Anne becomes a much more sympathetic and understandable figure. However, this also leads the viewer to question what happened to her after Allie chose Noah and if she ever got her only happy ending as well.

7 The Story Is Blatantly Classist And Sexist

The treatment of women and clunky discussions of class are glaringly obvious.

See more : When is Bill Maher Coming Back on HBO? What Happened to Him on HBO?

Perhaps the most essential conflict of the film is that Allie’s family doesn’t think Noah is good enough for her because of their class differences.

The Notebook‘s setting and timeline cannot be separated from the story, and it was quite a different time. However, while the cultural relationship to gender roles and class division was markedly different from today, the story was written quite recently and can be judged by today’s standards. Perhaps the most essential conflict of the film is that Allie’s family doesn’t think Noah is good enough for her because of their class differences. However, outside championing the power of love, the story does little to push back on this.

Noah is characterized as having to resort to cheap ploys to get Allie’s attention. Conversely, Lon wins her over with grace and charm. However, this isn’t an indictment on cultural perceptions of class but on the story’s essential opinion about how people from different social stratifications behave. Additionally, Noah treats Allie as property, as do most people in her life. Noah’s type of strong, silent masculinity is juxtaposed against Lon’s emotionally available sensitivity. Allie’s decision to be with Noah reinforces outdated discussions of gender and relationships.

6 The Story Leaves Out The Horrors Of WW2

It’s merely a footnote in support of the larger love story.

There are many great World War 2 movies praised for realism, while others are less realistic but still engage with the complex and traumatic events of the time. The Notebook uses WW2 as a backdrop and uses it as an excuse to kill off Noah’s only friend in the story. Lon’s injuries and Noah’s loss are the only ways that the narrative weaves the impact of the war into the narrative. Leading up to Noah’s shipment overseas, it’s easy to forget that the war was coming at all.

Since the war is so ancillary to the plot, the story feels as though it’s only set in the ’40s for the style. While it’s not the job of The Notebook to delve into every avenue of the war, it’s confusing to see how little it touches the story’s world. Noah comes home and immediately begins to work on his house, and Allie goes to school and starts seeing Lon as if nothing’s happened. The omission of so many outside elements of the setting is indicative of the larger issues of The Notebook being disconnected from reality.

5 Noah And Allie Have Nothing In Common

While their physical chemistry is strong, this isn’t the basis for a long relationship.

Though they can’t be categorized as having an enemies-to-lovers arc, Allie and Noah are extremely combative with each other throughout the story. During their initial courtship, it’s clear that the essential element that’s drawn them together is physical attraction. While there’s nothing wrong with this, and many romantic partnerships start like this, it’s seemingly all they can agree on. They fight constantly, nearly to the point of physical violence, and practically every sweet moment between them devolves into a fight. The reason for their breakup is that Allie’s anger at Noah eclipses her reason.

For all of the story’s comments on how class can’t keep people apart, Allie enjoys and revels in her many privileges.

Much of this could be boiled down to youth and inexperience if not for the fact that their fighting starts up again almost as soon as they’re back together as adults.The Notebook returns to the fact that Noah supports Allie’s painting many times as an indicator that he’s her one true love, but this singular fact is not enough to bridge the gulf between them. For all of the story’s comments on how class can’t keep people apart, Allie enjoys and revels in her many privileges.

4 The Representation Of Alzheimer’s Is Mishandled

Noah’s decision to read the notebook to Allie has been called into question.

The frame story of the movie involves an older man, Duke, reading the story of a pair of young lovers, Noah and Allie, to a woman with Alzheimer’s in an assisted living home. Eventually, it’s made clear that the older couple are Noah and Allie in the future and that Noah continuously reads the story of how they fell in love to her to get her to remember. While this is a signal of his love and devotion towards her, it’s not the best course of action when caring for a loved one experiencing the disease.

Allie’s discomfort and the confusion the story causes her are shown when she lashes out and doesn’t want to see Noah in a key scene of the movie. Additionally, the severity of the disease, its progression, and Allie’s condition are unclear throughout the film. When she and Noah hold each other and pass on, it’s jarring, as both appear relatively physically healthy throughout the movie. Not to mention, Allie’s sudden and complete recollection of her past is unrealistic and unfair to caregivers who are familiar with Alzheimer’s.

3 The Racism Of This Period Is Overlooked

While issues of class are on full display, racial prejudice is skirted around.

Creators will often point to the time period a story is set in to justify casting predominantly white actors and telling only white stories.

The newest iteration of Sparks’ novel, the 2022 stage musical adaptation of The Notebook, grapples directly with the story’s legacy of whitewashing history. Overwhelming whiteness is not a new feature of period-piece movies, books, and TV. Creators will often point to the time period a story is set in to justify casting predominantly white actors and telling only white stories. In the future, the voices of writers of color within the romance genre must be elevated. The media has been trending toward this in recent years, but it must be an active push on Hollywood’s part.

See more : The Amazing Race Canada Season 9 Episode 9 Release Date and Time, Countdown, When Is It Coming Out?

Looking back on the original movie, it’s as if Allie, Noah, and their white families are the only people in the world, with the few characters of color existing only in the background. The Notebook is hardly the only movie that is guilty of this, and it’s something to keep in mind, especially considering the movie is only twenty years old. There’s always a way to infuse diversity into a story, as the musical proves, but there must also be space for new stories that feature this inclusion from the start.

2 Lon Is A Better Match For Allie Than Noah

As a man and partner, Lon is a stronger fit for Allie.

There is an inherent desirability to being one-half of a pair of star-crossed lovers, but not only did Lon love Allie, but he was there for her no matter what. Allie’s connection with Lon is representative of a more mature and long-lasting relationship and one between two adults who have experienced grief and loss. Part of the reason that Allie ultimately chooses Noah is because she wants to get back her innocence and the person she was before she lost Noah and went through the war. However, the person she is in the end is just as valuable.

Allie and Noah have never lived together, barely know each other as adults, and are basing the rest of their lives off of teenage first love. The relationship between Allie and Noah only works in fiction. Lon understands the life Allie wants and respects her independence, something Noah rarely does. Any of the issues that Allie sees in Lon are ones she projects onto him because she wants to convince herself to be with Noah. Lon pined for Allie as Noah did, but he handled it as an adult and treated her as a person instead of an object.

Related
The Notebook Ending Explained: Alternate Streaming Version, Noah & Allie’s Fate

Allie and Noah’s ending in The Notebook left a few questions unanswered, and the streaming version’s alternate ending only adds to the confusion.

1 The Fallout From Their Affair Is Never Revealed

The period between their reunion and their deaths remains a mystery.

It can be assumed from Allie and Noah’s residency in an up-scale assisted living home and the presence of their many children that things worked out when Allie picked Noah. However, the struggle and lifestyle changes both must have faced and the impact on everyone else in their lives is never addressed. This is a fundamental problem with many rom-coms, as the happily-ever-after is elevated for the sake of the story, but this isn’t realistic to how relationships actually unfold. Of course, The Notebook is a fantasy, but the implication that their love transcends all consequences is ridiculous.

The start of their lives together shouldn’t have been based on the past but on the couple’s potential for the future.

It’s unlikely that following the affair and breaking off her engagement to Lon, Allie’s family would’ve been automatically accepting of their love. Her family was an important part of her life throughout the story, and she wouldn’t have wanted to throw this away. In Noah’s final speech to Allie, when he tells her they need to fight for each other, it’s the final appeal to her nostalgia and memory of her childhood. However, the start of their lives together shouldn’t have been based on the past but on the couple’s potential for the future.

The Notebook
PG-13
Drama
Romance

Where to Watch

*Availability in US

stream
rent
buy

Not available

Adapted from Nicholas Sparks’ novel of the same name, The Notebook is a romantic drama film that follows a couple who fall in love during the 1940s. Duke, an older man, recounts the story of two young lovers whose lives never lined up quite right to a fellow patient in his nursing home. Reading from the notebook pages, the movie keeps flashing from the present into the past to tell the story of the one that got away.

Director Nick Cassavetes Release Date June 25, 2004 Cast Ryan Gosling , Rachel McAdams , James Garner , Gena Rowlands , James Marsden , Kevin Connolly , Sam Shepard , Joan Allen Runtime 124 Minutes

Source: https://dinhtienhoang.edu.vn
Category: Entertainment