The Notebook as a metaphor

Rating: 9/10 (12 December 2013)

The Notebook a story of Cognoscente Love While on an airplane I saw the The Notebook. When I watch a movie I like to watch passively in order to fully and uncritically enter into the world developed by the film. Rather than thinking critically at first—there will be time for that later—I want to give the story-teller his due, let him do his best artistically in order to create a coherent world that invites me in. After the film I like to revisit the story and ask critical questions about it. I like to ask, was there any point in the film where I felt particularly moved emotionally? If so, what might have been going on in the film to stimulate this. There was such a scene in The Notebook that moved me deeply and brought tears to my eyes.
I must put the scene in context. The Notebook begins when an older man—played by James Garner— enters the room of an elderly woman (Gina Rowlands) at a nursing home. She seems confused and a little standoffish. A nurse reassures by saying, "Its OK, he comes every day to read to you." In this moment one surmises that this woman has dementia of some sort and this kind man volunteers at the hospital by reading to the patients.
The film goes back and forth between this elderly man reading to this elderly woman and flashbacks from the book being read. The story is about a young man (Ryan Gosling) and a young woman (Rachael McAdams) who, against all odds working against them, fall in love. The young woman is from an upper class family; the young man is relatively poor. The woman comes from sophistication and refinement; the man is unrefined but tender hearted. The man has a high school diploma and likes poetry; the woman is educated in the best schools her parents can afford. The woman has a controlling mother and father; the man's mother has died and his father is present but somewhat distant. The young woman lives far away and only comes into proximity with the man when she happens to be summering in the town where he lives. There is so much distance between these two: socially; economically; geographically; educationally; and, to compound matters World War II breaks out and adds another degree of separation as the young man goes off to war and the young woman working as a nurse begins to fall for a patient more of her class and sophistication. With all the odds against them, this man and this woman do fall in love and marry.
About two-thirds of the way through the film the viewer puts it together that this is in fact the old couple's story. The man reads to the woman he fell in love with so many years before. Near the end of the film as the day is drawing nigh and the story nearly read, the older man and the older woman are eating a nice dinner by candle light. A single rose in a vase adorns the table and a phonograph is playing the music that has contributed to so many of this couple's memories together. The entire atmosphere is shouting out to the woman trapped in the deep recesses of her dementia. As the story ends, the woman says, "That is the most beautiful story I have ever heard; and it sounds so very familiar." In that moment cognition washes across her face and her expression moves from the vacuousness that once characterized it to an expression flush with perception. She looks at her husband and says, "It's our story isn't it?" He says, "Yes." She asks, "How much time do we have?" He answers, "Last time it was about five minutes." She asks what any mother would, "How are the children?" He says, "There fine. They were here to see you today." She asks, "Tell them I love them," and he assures her that he will.
Then, as the music is still playing, she says, "Hold me, can we dance?" He stands and takes her in his arms and they begin to move slowly to the music. Then just as quickly as cognition came to her so her oblivion returns. She finds her self in the arms of a stranger and screams. The orderlies rush into the room and find it necessary to sedate the old woman in order for her to calm down. James Garner's character is standing, watching it all, biting his knuckle, and weeping. It was that scene that moved me so deeply. In fact it moves me now as I type this. Why? What was it that was so touching about that scene? Of course it has all the sentimentalism of a great love story between a man and woman; magnified by the triumph of their love to reach across the many things that sought to separate them even at the end of their lives. But, as I thought about it I realized there was more to it than that.
I believe the story is a kind of metaphor or analogy that explains something of the quality of every human story. For certainly, all of our lives consist in God telling each of us, perpetually, about his love story with us. He tells of His wooing and loving us. He has placed us in an environment that, one way or another, cries out to us His great love for us. Most of our lives we live as with dementia. Then moments occur when cognition of His love occurs and we respond. Then as easily as we fell into cognition, in a moment, we fall out. In Garners' tears and the biting of his knuckles, I think I saw something analogous to the love of God for us. He cannot love us any more than He does. Infinite love has no capacity to increase. The question is will we be cognizant of that love or not?