Decent Tender Movie

Rating: 8/10 (30 April 2006)

I have seen several movies with similar plot elements in the love story, the old house rebuilt by a poor man for his beautiful love interest (including It's a Wonderful Life which includes a beautiful love story), poor vs. rich, forbidden love, even some of the lines. However, what wins me over in this movie are the tender moments between the characters, both when they are old and when they are young. The love scenes and the female character's nerves in the first one and the respect and support of the male character are tasteful, and tender as I have ever seen and foreshadows the support he gives her in his advanced years. The whole courting starting from the dance in the street to "I love you's" is very sweet. The only weakness I saw in the courting was a fiddle dancing scene at Noah's home that I thought just looked silly and unnecessarily stereotypical of the south. In contrast, painstaking efforts were made to make this period piece an accurate representation of the times and it reaped dividends. I agree with the goof section that South Carolina is very hot and humid in the summer and seeing your breath even in the middle of the night is not common unless it is foggy. It implies that it is cold and it is rare for temperatures to go below 65 degrees at night. The other aspect of this movie is how they deal with dementia and Alzheimer's, a disease that I dread ever getting. How does one deal with a love one who cannot remember you or may never again return the love that you have given? This is even more compounded by the fact that in this case the love is as intense as one can imagine, where the emotional honesty of the couple is healthy and where they constantly feed off of each others emotions, feelings and opinions. You are losing your partner in life, the other half of your soul, the person you can open your heart to every day, what do you do? The dedication by Noah to his deteriorating wife even with his own health problems and the strength of their love is what touched me the most. This type of problem affect millions of couples in the US alone and the tenderness and the brief "returns" of Allie brought tears to my eyes. The last scene seemed a stretch, but illustrates what couples with intense relationships do when one can not be with the other. When one dies, the others dies shortly thereafter. As for relating to the characters, I cannot personally directly unlike other critics, but I have parents, and other people of my parent's time who had to deal with issues such as these. One was a couple where one married another in forbidden love because they were from conflicting cultures, and their love was clear and intense, then one got MS, the other got cancer. In their case the woman with MS had to take care of her critically ill husband. When he died she got the same cancer and died a year later! My folks said it was love at first sight.
They did a great job. I give it an 8 out of 10 only because of the minor criticisms I had that got to my pet peeves.
Acting comments: I got to see the Rachel McAdams interview for the part of Allie with Ryan Gosling reading the lines. Pretty amazing how she could get in character with no set, no direction. So much so that she was crying for real after she was done. That's talent.