Rowlands] Garner reads to his wife Rowlands from a notebook recounting the story of an unsuitable love match that ends happily. Sort of. Rowlands is suffering from dementia, and Garner hopes that reading the notebook will “bring her back.” It does, of course, for a few minutes, but the revelation that they are the couple in the notebook doesn’t surprise the audience, who has twigged to this when the first flashback appears on the screen.
So we know how the story will turn out long before it reaches its first crisis. Why keep watching, then? To find out how Nicholas Sparks, who wrote the source-novel, embellishes the tale, and how well the movie team does its job. The acting is very good throughout. The handful of awards won by this movie were all for the acting. The photography is always good and sometimes so good it distracts you from the story. Which may be a good thing, since the narrative rhythm is lackadaisical and slow.A shorter movie would have been better, I think. At any rate, there were a few places where I yielded to the temptation to yawn. Perhaps Cassavetes wanted to linger over the romantic moments to nudge our nostalgia into high gear. It’s a movie aimed at both the very young and the elderly, both of whom like to indulge in nostalgia, the young for what they haven’t experienced yet, and the old for what they wish they had experienced. Faux nostalgia, in other words.
Like the curate’s egg, this movie is excellent in parts. The parts add up to less than a satisfying whole, however. I suspect the book reads better. *½
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