(2004) Love awakens the soul, making it reach for more. Nick Cassavetes directed this somewhat mawkish adaptation of Nicholas Sparks's big romantic novel; expect to see it as a Hallmark classic on tv, which might explain why it was edited for a PG-13 rating.

Duke (James Garner), an elderly gentleman, comes in to read from a handwritten notebook to an elderly lady (Gena Rowlands), suffering from senile dementia, a story about a young couple, Noah Calhoun (Ryan Gosling) and Allie Hamilton (Rachel McAdams), in Seabrook, South Carolina. A stranger to her mind, he begins reading from June 6th, 1940, at a carnival where Fin (Kevin Connolly) introduces his friend Noah to 17-year-old Allie.

To make an impression on the girl, Noah leaps onto the Ferris wheel to coerce a date from her. "I could be whatever you want," he tells Allie. He's a country boy working in a lumber yard for 40¢ an hour; she's a city girl from a wealthy family preparing to attend college. After going to see the movie Li'l Abner, Noah lies down in the street, eventually getting her to lie down beside him as a lesson in trust; after narrowly escaping from a motorist, they dance gleefully in the street.

Improbably they fall in love and become inseparable that summer, arguing, fighting, challenging - but crazy about each other. Allie stopping by in the evening hears Noah reading from Walt Whitman's Leaves of Grass to his father (Sam Shepard), who explains that Noah (embarrassed in the telling) overcame stuttering by reading poetry aloud. Later, of course, there will be a scene of her in a college English course studying Whitman.

When Noah is introduced to her parents, Allie's father (David Thornton) dismisses the infatuation as a summer fling, but her mother (Joan Allen) sees "trouble" for her daughter - "heart-broken or pregnant" - in a boy she sees as "trash." Meanwhile, Noah shows Allie the old, decrepit Windsor Plantation and tells her of his dream one day to purchase the property and rebuild it for her, if she wants it. Nevertheless, when her parents' prejudices come into the open, Noah the realist says: "I don't see how it's going to work."

After Allie's whisked away to Sarah Lawrence College in New York, Noah writes to her every day for a full year but receives no response. After working in Atlanta in the new defense industry, Noah and Fin enlist in the army. During her third year in college, Allie volunteers as a nurse and treats a badly wounded officer, Lon Hammond Jr (James Marsden), who recovers and wins her heart and her parents' approval.

Handsome, smart, rich with old Southern charm and money, Lon is a true gentleman with a sense of humor - pointing out that if she marries him she'll lose her lifelong defiance of her parents - and a soul for humanity. Fate allows Noah to glimpse Allie with Lon in Charleston while on his way to get approval for his architectural plans to rebuild the Windsor mansion. After that something snaps in Noah; he takes up with Martha Shaw, a war widow, though he admits to her everything he could have given her is broken within him.

Getting fitted for her wedding gown, Allie sees a photo of Noah in front of his recreated southern mansion; without explaining why but assuring Lon that he has nothing to worry about, Allie drives herself back to Seabrook for a final visit to see Noah: "I waited for you for seven years." Learning of her mother's deception at not forwarding the letters, Noah says to Allie: "You wouldn't be here if there wasn't something missing."

Torn between the two men she genuinely loves, her heart paralyzed at not wanting to hurt either of them, she at first throws caution to the wind before her mother knocks on the door and takes her for a drive to see the man she almost married, a beefy laborer, before she married well, achieving both security and love. But Noah, who on his own has become more than a simple lumber-yard worker, determined not to lose her a second time by his own mistake, demands that she answer one question honestly: "What do you want?"

Having suffered two minor heart attacks in the previous 18 months, Duke during a medical exam says to the doctor that by reading to her he's helping revive a memory. "It's useless," says the doctor. To which Duke replies: "Science only goes so far, then comes God." The lady in the nursing home says to Duke: "This is a good story. Have I heard it before?"

Caution: The remaining commentary may be a spoiler for anyone who hasn't seen the picture. The mystery of the woman's identity, if you haven't guessed as I did nearly from the beginning, is revealed a little more than half way through the film when Duke's three grown children and their children come for a visit. This, of course, eliminates any suspense as to whom Allie will marry. Our interest in the remainder of the story hangs on whether or not Allie will remember who she and Duke were.

In addition to the ending being too much of a miraculous stretch, I would have preferred more suspense toward the end as to whom she married. Other flaws detracted from my fuller appreciation and engagement in the story. Most of the characters, though they are natives to South Carolina, don't speak with a Southern drawl. The pasted-in war scene (I'm assuming since Noah and Fin went from North Africa into Europe with Patton's 3rd Army that they were at the Battle of the Bulge or nearby) in which Fin dies lacks realistic detail. Noah returns home from war perhaps a little sadder and wiser, but the loss of his friend and the memories of what he must have seen and done appear to have no further affect on his character. Why would Mrs Hamilton have kept for seven years all of the 365 letters Noah wrote to Allie during the first year she went away to college? Realistically wouldn't she have immediately destroyed them? Finally, why does the old Noah use the name Duke, other than to keep us temporarily in the dark as to his actual identity? Compared to Evening, this film has a pious, didactic tone.

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Copyright © 2008 Patrick Ivers. All rights reserved.
Reproduced with the permission of the copyright holder.

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