The Notebook

A film that begins in a care home. An old man reads to a woman from a notebook every day. Her memory has gone and she does not recognise the story. The story takes place in a town in 1940. Noah works at a lumber yard; Allie is from a wealthy family down for the summer. They meet at a fairground and are together for one summer. Her family is against it. When the summer ends Allie goes back to the city and the letters Noah writes never arrive. From there the film moves years forward. There is a war, Noah repairs a house after he returns, and Allie has become engaged. What the narrative is interested in is not love but remembering: the man in the frame story reads from a notebook and does it again every day, and the feeling of the film is really there. The argument in the rain is its best known moment and uses the genre's habits to the full. The mother line is the best written part. She puts her daughter in a car and shows her something from her own past, and explains not a word of it. The source is a novel by Nicholas Sparks. On release it was received lukewarmly by critics; it found its audience in later years and became one of the genre's measures. Ryan Gosling, Rachel McAdams, Gena Rowlands, James Garner and Joan Allen are in the cast. Nick Cassavetes directed; the old woman is played by his own mother. Who it is for: anyone who likes classical romantic drama. Who it is not for: anyone uncomfortable with emotional manipulation; the film spares no device.