The Notebook

Last Friday, the predawn hours found me in tears. I didn’t know that a bunch of love letters could touch me so deeply. And they weren’t even for me. I’ve written and then read some in my life, true, but nothing really has moved me until now. Not until The Notebook.

I chanced upon the book while raiding my sister’s book shelf for something to help me sleep. The title rang a distant bell. Wasn’t there some hype about this on TV awhile back? Poor boy meets rich girl, mother drives them apart. Rich girl meets rich boy and agrees to marry. Poor boy comes back to the picture, rich girl is now confused. Ugh, not another cheesy love story, please. But then I figured I wanted to sleep anyway so this ought to do it.

I started reading midnight. Twenty minutes later, the first tear fell. And then some. By the time I finished with the last page about 3 AM, I was sobbing like mad. Sleep was long forgotten.

Two days later, I was strolling in the mall when guess what – there it was "The Notebook" on film! I couldn’t believe it. And then, just like a cue from a play, my phone sings with a text message: ‘hey, want to catch a movie later?" Do I ever!

My mistake.

I guess I should have just stuck with the book and let the movie go. For all the while I was watching, I couldn’t help but compare it to the book and the movie just didn’t live up to my expectations.

I guess the problem (mine particularly) with reading good books is that, you connect to it on a certain way and remember the moment so much that you don’t want anything, anything at all, changed. And it’s a sad thing really when someone tries to copy or renew something and still the original author outshines or tells it better than the director or screenwriter of the new material does. Same goes with singers who try to revive, nah, redo the classics.

It’s not that the movie was really bad. If I hadn’t read the book, I may have even applauded it. I love the acting especially. Rachel McAdams as Allie was real and captivating. She was totally in character. I just loved her. Ryan Gosling, well, I couldn’t have picked a better Noah. I fell in love with him myself. Not only is he a dreamy leading man but one who knows how to play it as well.

I guess I just have a problem with details of the film’s interpretation.

* North Carolina, the big southern house Noah rebuilt, and even the lagoon with the swans looked lovelier and more romantic in my imagination than on film. I never did get to see in any of the scenes Noah reflecting on the wraparound porch bathed in the colors of twilight as portrayed in the book. I didn’t feel the poetry in the setting:

This is thy hour O Soul, thy free flight into the wordless
Away from books, away from art, the day erased, the lesson done,
Thee fully forth emerging, silent, gazing, pondering the themes thou lovest best
Night, sleep, death and the stars. (Walt Whitman)

* Noah wasn’t supposed to be a daring, boisterous character as seen on film. It was supposed to be Allie who said hi and opened up to him first, not the other way around, because he was shy. Noah was supposed to be deep, reflective, quiet, yet confident and a bit wiser for his age. He was supposed to play the guitar. And above all, he was supposed to be a lover of poetry. I couldn’t understand why they treated that lightly and showed that part of Noah only in passing when I think it was in fact poetry which defined the man. It was the reason Allie fell in love with him. It was the reason I fell in love with him. How can you resist a man who sends notes like this:

The body slows with mortal ache, yet my promise
remains true at the closing of our days,
A tender touch that ends with a kiss
will awaken love in joyous ways.
Our souls were one, if you must know
And never shall they be apart;
With splendid dawn, your face aglow
I reach for you and find my heart.
* In the book, they passed the time with Noah reading poetry to Allie. They culminated their summer romance, at 17, by losing their virginity together in the old dilapidated southern house. In the movie, I couldn’t understand it -- Noah and Allie were always kissing each other, and yet when the moment came, they didn’t push through coz they got interrupted. What the -- ! What was that all about? What’s the point of not letting them come together? It was a significant moment in their lives. They were supposed to be each others’ firsts.

* Noah and Allie didn’t part in a fight. It was painful for them but they accepted it. As Noah wrote:

My dearest Allie,
I don’t know what to say anymore except that I couldn’t sleep last night because I knew that it is over between us. It is a different feeling for me, one that I never expected, but looking back, I suppose it couldn’t have ended another way.
You and I were different. We came from different worlds, and yet you were the one who taught me the value of love. You showed me what it was to care for another, and I am a better man because of it. I don’t want you to ever forget that.
I am not bitter because of what has happened. On the contrary, I am secure in knowing that what we had was real, and I was happy that we were able to come together for even a short period of time. And if, in some distant place in the future, we see each other in our new lives, I will smile at you with joy, and remember how we spent a summer beneath the trees, learning from each other and growing in love. And maybe, for a brief moment, you’ll feel it too, and you’ll smile back, and savor the memories we will always share together.
I love you, Allie.
Noah

And when they reunited, it wasn’t out of anger or frustration that they made love again. It was a slow rekindling of the fire, a remembering of the love they once shared, a beautiful moment when Allie realized she hasn’t really stopped loving Noah.

Sigh. Maybe I’m just nitpicking. But hey, did they really have to change it? I feel like it’s Boracay all over again. When I first went to that place, it was less crowded and the beach was really pristine and lovely. Now, with its popularity comes too many shops, too many people, too many conventions, too much noise. I guess they commercialized it so much it’s never the same. Except, maybe, during off season.

A part of me understands that sometimes moviemakers are really left with no choice but to cut parts of a book and sew back pieces in a different way especially when they have limits. It’s only a 2-hour-or-so flick after all so they really can’t present all.

Which, in a roundabout way, supports the point I’m after – why attempt to do it at all? I want to say: Next time, Hollywood, when there’s a really, really good book, leave it alone please! Why force it when you can’t do it justice? You start presenting a version, your version, and you rob the readers of their imagination. You cloud the personal meanings one might get out of the book. You interrupt the connection with your own style and colors. You’re like spoon feeding and I don’t like it! Why not make your own original stories? Don't your writers get paid to be original and creative?

Now, if it’s a bad book and you think you can present it better, that’s a different story. But a bestseller? Tsk. Tsk.

The Notebook should have been left alone as a book. For me, what makes it beautiful is not really the plot or the story. Theirs is a theme (love, love triangle, forbidden love) used many times over. But the way the author weaved them all together -- the place, the characters, their emotions, and their minds – ooohh boy, it was lovely. The real power I believe is in the written words-- the poetry and the love letters – all of it were so simple and yet so real. And that’s something the movie didn’t or couldn’t capture.

As I read the book, I wondered about Nicholas Sparks, the author. A person who writes about such love must be a man in love himself. I looked at the dedication page and there was my answer. He writes: This book is dedicated with love to Cathy, my wife and friend.

And when the feeling is real, like love, it shows. It touches you. Deeply.

I cried for Lon, Allie’s rich boy fiancé who truly fell in love and lost. I cried for him when he began to fear for that love, when he realized she was slipping away, and yet, even in his perfection, he can’t do anything about it. As Noah wrote of him to Allie:

"No, he could not understand losing you, but how could he? Even as you explained that you had always loved me and it wouldn’t be fair to him, he didn’t release your hand. I know he was hurt and angry, and tried for almost an hour to change your mind, but when you stood firm and said, "I can’t go back with you, I’m sorry," he knew that your decision had been made. You said he simply nodded and the two of you sat together without speaking… And when he finally walked you to your car, you said he told you that I was a lucky man. He behaved as a gentleman would, and I understood then why your choice was so hard."
I cried for Noah because his love was so pure and deep. He never wavered. And he gave so much. He writes:

"You are always here with me when I do so, at least in my heart, and it is impossible for me to remember a time when you were not a part of me. I do not know who I would have become had you never come back to me that day, but I have no doubt that I would have lived and died with regrets that thankfully, I will never know.I love you, Allie. I am who I am because of you. You are every reason, every hope, and every dream I’ve ever had, and no matter what happens to us in the future, everyday we are together is the greatest day of my life. I will always be yours.
And, my darling, you will always be mine.
Noah"

I cried for Allie because I really believed her when she said she loved both men.

And then I cried for me, because in that 3-hour moment, I realized that in all my 26 years, I have never really been in love. Not the real kind. I have never really loved another as passionately and as deeply as they did. No man has ever really touched my soul. And I’m beginning to wonder why and if I ever will.

I wonder. Funny, the questions life brings you.