The Notebook is a film which uses a love relationship to help structure the film itself. The interesting aspect of this is that the film is formulated primarily by the lack of a relationship or when one of the parties is completely unaware of the relationship in and of itself. So the film is almost driven by a lack of relationship, whereas many other films are hinged upon the opposite.
Primarily, the entire movie is hinged upon an elderly man referred to as Duke, who is reading a story to an elderly woman. Without the telling of this story, there would be no movie. Upon examining the situation, it is revealed that the love story being told is not a work of fiction. While one might initially believe the relationship in the present is just between two individuals who are kept in the same nursing home, these two individuals were, or are, actually deeply in love. Viewers learn that it is Allie who is the elderly woman; she has dementia and has begun to forget Duke/Noah. In fact, their children lose hope that Allie will be able to remember anything at all. Duke/Noah continues to read to Allie. He is deeply, passionately devoted to her even though she is unable to understand or connect to him. He keeps reading her the story, their story.
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In the beginning of their relationship, Noah watches Allie from afar. He attempts to get her attention by climbing up to her on a Ferris wheel. This part of their budding relationship is filled with drama. He is overly dramatic in his attempt to talk to her and he gets even more so to earn her permission for a date – he threatens to jump from the Ferris wheel. In this, their relationship is fairly juvenile and immature. Such grandiose and melodramatic insistences should not be necessary in mature relationships. In fact, they do not even finalize the details of their date. This is performed by their friends, Fin and Sarah. They set up a movie date for the pair and the four of them spend the summer together while Noah and Allie’s love blossoms. Through the course of the summer, their relationship solidifies and it becomes a bit more mature. They are still young and living with their parents, so there is only so much maturing their relationship can endure, and an argument over their social statuses and family interferences causes them to break up.
They are young and they do have their follies and there is a deep sense of miscommunication when it comes to their relationship. Despite the fact that they break up, Allie still loves Noah. She is forced to move and tries to find Noah to tell him that she still loves him even though they broke up. She can’t find him and relies on Fin to tell Noah. This exemplifies another breakdown in the communication between the couple; they have to rely on others to progress their relationship and these people do not always fulfill their duties as requested by Allie or Noah.
Here, when the movie moves away from the present and travels back to the past, the dichotomy of their relationship can be explored more in depth. Noah is always the one to take chances. He takes a more aggressive, potentially masculine, role when it comes to communicating with Allie. He risked his safety climbing on the Ferris Wheel just to talk to Allie. Even after moving, Noah is aggressive in his communications with Allie. He writes a letter to her every day for an entire year. He communicates all his love and devotion through this handwritten letters. They speak the truth of his love for Allie. It is not indicated that Allie does anything similar. However, this is partially due to the fact that Anne is always intercepting the letters from Noah.
The couple is apart for seven years before they see each other again. Their relationship has been put on the back burner; they still love each other but Noah likely feels his love and devotion was not reciprocated after his letters went unanswered and Allie probably feels that she wasn’t important enough to Noah, otherwise he would have responded to her admission that she still loved him. The two were forced to go on about their lives, regardless of what the other one was doing. Their relationship is rekindled in Noah when he sees Allie from the bus, but is silenced a bit seeing her passionate embrace with Lon. Still, he hopes if he rebuilds her dream house she will return to him. This may seem like a fantasy inspired aspect of their relationship in Noah’s mind, but it actually does work – Allie sees Noah is rebuilding the house in a newspaper and goes to visit him.
Their relationship is still as passionate as ever, but also as complicated. They argue over the letters Noah says he wrote, but Allie never received, and they go on to make love. The couple is finally able to communicate their love with each other without using words. Still, because the two are technically involved with others, their relationship is unable to be whole.
Meanwhile, even though it was her attempt to keep the two apart, for some reason Anne keeps the letters from Noah for all those years. Perhaps because of her own love for a ‘commoner’, she did keep them and later gave the letters to Allie, allowing for improved communication between the two. Allie is confused about her relationships and who she should remain with, which causes a great deal of stress in her relationship with Noah. After deciding to return to Noah, Allie leaves Lon and goes to Noah’s. Their relationship is finally permitted to be whole and entire.
But it isn’t. The movie flashes back to the present and the woman demands Duke/Noah finish the story. He encourages her to remember. At his insistence, Allie finally returns. For a brief, brief moment, the audience is able to see the relationship in its entirety. The two are there, present, together and deeply in love. The notebook Duke is holding was written by Allie, exploring the story of their love, as a tool to help keep them connected. The lucidity lasts only minutes before Allie succumbs to her disease and becomes so frightened of Duke, a stranger, that she has to be sedated. Their relationship goes back to a murky mystery; can they even have a relationship when one party does not remember the other?
The two are separated by circumstance yet again when Duke/Noah suffers a heart attack. The ‘relationship’ seems as fragile as ever. Duke/Noah’s health is fading and Allie has been so alone while he recovers. Still, he finds her one last time in her room. After another long questionable period of time while they were apart, their murky relationship is solid once more.
Allie is, in fact, returned to Duke/Noah, albeit briefly once more, to reaffirm her love and ask questions regarding their relationship. Duke/Noah is determined to continue trying to communicate with Allie, even if she isn’t able to reciprocate. It is important to him that their love be expressed. When Allie is lucid, it seems important to her as well. However, it turns out that their relationship will never have to go into a questionable period again. They die together that night, holding each other. A whole picture of their relationship is rarely seen and mostly often alluded to; for example, the two have children so there must have been years of wedded bliss, the audience simply wasn’t privy to it. Communications, between the characters and between the movie and the audience, are often so vague and veiled, it is extremely telling when there are direct communications.
