The Notebook - see blog's title

Oh god, here we fucking go.

Old woman looks out of a window. Old man strides about a nursing home, his name is Duke.

Duke i.e. Ryan Gosling when he is old narrates the story, oh WHOOPS, I’ve RUINED the twist of the storyline. Oh well, if you didn’t get the fact IMMEDIATLEY and I mean before Ryan and Rachel even come onto the screen, be ashamed. Some might argue that this isn’t meant to be a plot twist…but then why even BOTHER calling Ryan in his old age ‘Duke’ and not mentioning the female character. Why even have that if there wasn’t going to be some sort of revelation?

The representation of the retirement home is so inaccurate it is actually quite infuriating. Patients do not swan about the place with a skip in their step high fiving the staff with everyone having a smile on their fucking faces in the most miserable environment imaginable.

Duke offers to read the old hag a story; she mumbles about and acts like she has Alzheimer’s.

We are teleported to a simpler time – with glamorous stars Ryan and Rachel. Ryan watches Rachel laugh in slow…motion. I don’t know if this is meant to highlight Rachel’s fabulousness or if it acts as Ryan POV cam. so we can see how he sees the world – s…l…o…w.

Ryan looks uncomfortable and nearly embarrassed. He mutters all of his lines thinking ‘did I just fucking say that? That I’d be a BIRD?’

Rachel is upper class but a free spirit. She laughs a lot. What the hell is she laughing at? How her and the rest of the crew have robbed the audience of their money and of their intelligence??

Ryan demands Rachel goes out with him. They go out on a date that consists of dancing on the road and lying on the road. Unfortunately, a passing car crushes neither.

They fall in love etc – with a montage of loved up moments. They try and shag each other, but this is olden times and darn it, those gosh darned things just weren’t done back then.

The supporting characters repeatedly tell us that Rachel is ‘spectacular’. As there is no evidence of this on film, I think we are supposed to submit to what the supporting characters are saying and just take their word for it.

Infamous bird scene:

Rachel flaps her arms about, fucking cawing and pretending to fly (I think this is supposed to be an example of how SPECTACULAR she is). Ryan doesn’t even bother trying to hide his embarrassment and wishes he were somewhere else.
She asks him to say that she is a bird.
He says no.
She asks again.
He says she’s a bird.
‘Are you a bird?’ She asks.
‘Ifyourabirdimabird’ – he spits out as fast as he can.
There we have it, the most romantic, beautiful exchange ever written. They’re both birds now, isn’t that fucking great?

We also get the inevitable ‘I earn one dollar a week but I don’t need much money as I am a GOOD man, I am honest and pure and love my family. I don’t have much and I don’t know much, but I have the heart. I don’t need material possessions to provide my happiness; I have love…love, glorious love! Yet, my masculinity is unthreatened as even though I am something of a poet, I do hard woodworking. Oh yeah, I’d fucking beat you down if I was in a fight with you, upper class, cold hearted rich twerp!’ I’m sorry, but how many times have Hollywood rammed that admittedly, overlong message down our throats?

Working class Ryan’s dad is paralleled with Rachel’s upper class dad.
Working class – kind, reads, does woodwork, talks to Rachel kindly.
Upper class – sits alone at night on a rocking chair, twiddling a moustache, holding a cigar and swirling a glass of brandy. I can only assume the filmmakers read ‘societies class divides for dummies’

James Marsden plays the back up male character. What is with James Marsden always being cast as the secondary male? Is there something about him that screams second best? He is our generation’s Bill Pullman.

Ryan continues to be so…boring. James begins to look like the better choice.

They split up because were just past the half way point in the running time and something needs to fucking happen before I slash my wrists.

Old people time! Duke’s children visit and want him to come home. It is at this point that old Rachel actually utters the words ‘oooh, I do wish I could figure out the end of this story!’ - WHAT??

Before I go insane, we’ll cut to Ryan going to war. He sees things differently now. He decides to build a house modelled on the fresh prince of Bel Air’s mansion.

Rachel goes to see Ryan. They finally fuck. Audience is beyond caring by this point.

Ryan actually crept out of bed, cut out 50 individual arrow signs, glued them to the floor to a room with an easel for painting in whilst Rachel was asleep. Who would do that? She isn’t a child!

Ryan claims he wrote a letter a day to Rachel. A ‘letter’ of course meaning childish scribblings in crayon on a post it note, but at least he tried.

Rachel’s bitch of a mother hid the letters. No particular reason, but dammit! It made their love stronger.

Cut to present day, and old lady remembers! She remembers ALL!!! They dance for some time but oh no, that damn Alzheimer’s kicks off again and Rachel forgets everything. Duke looks upset.

Duke goes to see Rachel, who is in non-Alzheimer’s mode.

True love is apparently all-powerful and able to kill you if you ask it.

True love however, is not powerful enough to make a decent love story in Hollywood cinema anymore.
The end clip is of BIRDS flying to heaven. They actually became BIRDS.