Tear Jerker Love Story

Rating: 10/10 (7 December 2017)

A Walk to Remember is a story about Landon Carter, played by Shane West, a teenager who gets into trouble and is forced to do community service, perform in the school play, and tutor underprivileged kids. Jamie Sullivan, played by Mandy Moore, is a kind, caring, and ambitious girl that is complete opposite of Landon. Through his punishment, Landon begins to spend more time with Jamie, as Jamie willingly volunteers to tutor and perform in the school plays. Jamie and Landon end up falling in love with each other. However, Jamie has leukemia and is dying. When Landon learns of this he works very hard to help Jamie complete her life list of things she wanted to do, with one important item being getting married in the same chapel as Jamie's parents. Jamie helped Landon become a much better person. After Jamie's death Landon obtained and undergrad degree and was accepted into med school, which were two items on his life to do list. When visiting Jamie's father, Landon expresses his guilt of not accomplishing Jamie's wish of witnessing a miracle, to which her father replies that she did, Landon was her miracle.
The primary theme of this film is that of Landon and Jamie coming of age. Landon's coming of age was much more drastic than that of Jamie. Landon is first seen as a rebellious teen that has little care for the feelings of others. After spending more time with Jamie, Landon realizes his mindset is not appropriate and begins to become caring and compassionate. Landon shows this by sticking up for Jamie when a schoolmate photo-shopped Jamie's face on a scantily clad body, printed the picture, and passed it out to the entire school. Landon really exhibits his coming of age after he finds out that Jamie is dying. He goes above and beyond to complete as many items on Jamie's life to do list as possible. Jamie exhibits coming of age by accepting her illness and remaining a positive attitude and maintaining her trust in God.
The camera angles and close-ups were appropriately used to emphasize Landon's emotional changes. Lighting also played an important role in the film. For example, when Jamie was in the hospital dying the lighting was almost like a filtered sunlight, bright enough to emphasis her high spirits even though she knows her days are limited, but filtered to show that the scene has some gloom to it.
Writer, Nicholas Sparks, has a brilliant way of tugging at heart strings with romance stories that we all love to see and then end the story in ways that have us screaming no at what happens. Just like the ending of A Walk to Remember, the film Dear John ends with the main characters the love story is built upon not being together.