An Ordinary Story of Young Love, and a Heartbreaking Story of Mature Love

Rating: 9/10 (13 October 2005)

Other reviewers have been fascinated by a fairly standard Hollywood story of a youthful courtship. It's good (I'd say a 7 on the scale of 10), but not the real story of the movie.
An elderly man (whom I can relate to because I'm writing this on my 81st birthday) has an interest in a co-resident of his nursing home, an old woman who seems "out of it," but who responds somewhat to the story he reads to her each day -- of the young lovers. (That story, of course, is told in flashbacks, and constitutes maybe 90 percent of the movie. I can relate to it, too, because the lovers are just about the ages of my wife, of 60 years, and me.) However, a second story also develops between the contemporary elderly people, that to me is the heart of the movie. My wife called it a tear jerker. I agreed, though I hadn't shed any tears. Nevertheless, unlike most movies that are forgettable, this one remains vivid, and doesn't lose its punch with time. When I thought about it the next day, I was, indeed, moved emotionally. It's a beautiful story, and if you don't get it, I'm sorry. You need to be alert to catch the point -- or "punch line" -- as the "Notebook" is shown in a close-up near the end.
A beautiful, and marvelous movie! It loses just a point in the ratings because of unnecessary, though implied, sex -- not characteristic of movies of the 40s. (The CODE, you know.)