This isn't just another love story - it's life

Rating: 9/10 (14 April 2005)

What a fantastic way to be entertained! "Titanic", "Gone With the Wind", HA! THIS movie is where it's at. The movie wouldn't have been the same with a different cast. Stellar acting and an incredible story make for an all-time great. This is a film that should definitely be in your video library. This film is in my opinion one of the greatest love stories ever told.
On occasion you just do something at the spur of the moment for no real reason. Watching this movie was one of those things for me. I had no idea what the gist of the film was nor did I care.
The story is about a couple of seniors living in a retirement home. The man reads a story to the woman and takes you into the story. You actually feel like you are in the story with them. The transition from seeing him read to her to taking you into the film is so smooth and effortless that you don't even realize it has happened. It is just as natural as breathing air. The story starts out with a couple of kids falling in love. Their parents are opposed to the match and take the girl away. Time goes by and they do their own thing. Her thing is her thing while his thing is living up to the promises he had made to her.
Several years go by and she is getting ready to marry an elite socialite, which pleases her mother to no end. As fate would have it, she sees a picture of her former love in the paper and runs home to see if there is still any "fire" left. Of course there is, and what a roaring inferno she has stumbled upon! The old lady in the retirement home has dementia so she can't remember the story from the last time he read it to her. All she knows about it is that she loves hearing him read it to her. To her, the story is "lovely" but only vaguely familiar.
********SPOLIER DON'T KEEP READING UNLESS YOU WANT THE SPOILER ********
The story reveals only shortly after you figure out that the seniors are a couple. Not only are they a couple, but they have been married for many years. If you haven't guessed by now, "The Notebook" from which the man is reading, is a journal of their long lives together. The story being told is their story.
It is the story of their time together and their time apart; how she forgot him and how he kept her memory alive in his heart and soul.
The man has chosen to live with his wife at the retirement home even though she doesn't remember who he is. Their children and grandchildren visit and she meets "his" wonderful son and grandchildren for the "first" time again. They want their father to return home and abandon the mother since she can't remember who anyone is. He has vowed to never leave her alone. The nursing staff even tries to quarter them separately but he sneaks back to her bedside whenever he can. As all true lovers would dream of, they pass into eternity in each other's arms while sleeping peacefully.