In a retirement home, Duke (James Garner), who has survived two heart attacks, finds great pleasure in reading to Allie (Gena Rowlands) from a notebook about an enthralling love story. She is suffering from dementia and has a strange feeling that she has heard this tale before.
In the 1940s, Noah (Ryan Gosling) is a high school graduate who works at a lumber yard in Seabrook, North Carolina. At a carnival, he meets Alison (Rachel McAdams), and it is love at first sight. She is the daughter of a wealthy Southern couple (Joan Allen and David Thornton) who are vacationing in the town. On their first date, Noah and Alison go to a movie and during a leisurely walk home share a lot about themselves. She is very busy, even though she has not yet graduated from high school, with a slew of tutors getting her prepared for college. Noah asks what she does just for her own pleasure, and she admits to being a painter. In a trust test, he has her lie down in the center of the street where few cars travel and they continue their dialogue until an automobile suddenly appears and they leap to their feet, sending Alison into cascades of riotous laughter. He has awakened some primal feelings in her that she never knew she had. And this young man, who earns only forty cents an hour and is familiar with the poetry of Walt Whitman, knows that nothing will ever be the same again after one evening with this beautiful girl.
Their summertime love affair blossoms although they are from different social classes: she is a wealthy Southern belle "with the world at her feet" and he is a country boy who doesn't "have two dimes to rub together." They disagree on many things and fight a lot, but underneath it all Noah and Alison realize they are soul mates, destined to share their lives together in love. Of course, her elitist parents are a major roadblock; they are convinced he is nothing more than white trash and will never be able to provide for her properly. Alison is ordered to accompany her family as they return north, and Noah is heartbroken.
They part ways, both of them unhappy that their romance has ended in such a sad and dark way. Although Noah writes to Alison every day for a year, her mother intercepts the letters to insure that they don't get together again. The years pass and after losing his best friend Fin (Kevin Connolly) overseas in World War II, Noah returns home to live with his father Frank (Sam Shepard). His dad has sold their home so they can purchase a run-down Southern mansion built in 1772, a project that Noah has dreamed about for years. While he buries his yearning for Alison in work on the mansion, she attends college and starts dating Lon (James Marsden), a wounded soldier she met while volunteering as a nurse's aide. He is handsome, smart, charming, and comes from one of the richest families in the South. Her parents are thrilled that she has found the right man to marry. But shortly before the wedding, Alison sees a newspaper photograph of Noah standing proudly in front of the mansion he has restored. She cannot believe her eyes and realizes that she must see him again.
Nick Cassavetes directs this beautifully acted and heart-affecting love story based on a novel by Nicholas Sparks. This film has a depth of feeling and a cinematic richness that was lacking in two other adaptations of this gifted writer's novels: Message in a Bottle and A Walk to Remember. The top-drawer performances by Ryan Gosling, Rachel McAdams, James Garner, Gena Rowlands, and Joan Allen help carry this romantic drama into our hearts.
At one point, Duke says: "I am nothing special, of this I am sure. I am a common man with common thoughts and I've led a common life . . . but I've loved another with all my heart and soul, and to me, this has always been enough." Some viewers will find it easy to criticize the melodramatic dimensions of this story, but not us. We applaud the film's focus on how intimate relationships often draw out the warrior in us. Obstacles must be overcome; fierce and combative differences must be dealt with as both parties compromise. In this case, class warfare takes a heavy toll on these two soul mates. They are forced to dance on the razor's edge. The Notebook stands apart from other movies in this genre because of its steadfast refusal to overlook the role that class, in the name of money and power, plays in separating people.
