I think in these stories, the cheating, the definition of what is healthiest are paired with their more faithful and ‘healthier’ lives being their most compromised and unfree…

And Allie choosing Noah is similiar to Ellen coming out of the closet… it was her.. it was free.

That love is not selfish, it’s not altruistic, it’s not utilitarian… there are relationships and circumstances that are are those things and can be called “love”. But love is individual …as individual and simple as one’s signature, one’s favorite color, one’s spirit or soul you could say.

I think the overall things that spoke to such a wide audience, was Noah never letting go, which means never letting go of not just Allie, but himself …and for Allie it was about who she really was.

Thanks for reading. I’m sorry, I don’t remember the dialog from that scene well enough. I can only imagine that it would be James Garner saying that line, explaining why he’s still staying. Perhaps another reader here can clarify.

Many plot lines imply that it’s okay, normal, and common leave Relationship A if Relationship B seems like it’s better.

Even if the individual feels/knows that Relationship A is going well.

Some don’t completely walk away; just briefly, for a fling or affair. Adventure at all costs.

However, I have a question about the TV version of this movie. Yes, the guests at the nursing home are the adult children of Noah & Allie. Doesn’t one of the offspring say in protest, “Mom needs you”? Did I hear this correctly? Was this added to keep viewers in suspense? It implies a second mother resides elsewhere & deserves Noah’s attention. What, a step mom?

Thanks for reading and thanks for the lovely, well-thought out comment. I only take issue with the part about “reality vs. film”. I think what people enjoy in film also offers a little insight into their morality. It is doubtful that we will ever see a pedophile as a sympathetic hero. That’s because there is a universal disgust of pedophiles. No amount of willing suspension of disbelief is going to make that palatable. Conversely, while people abhor torturing others for vital information, viewers can still get behind a film protagonist torturing someone to find out where the bomb is hidden or where the bad guys have taken the hero’s daughter. That’s because, I think, viewers privately understand that if given the same extraordinary, unlikely, improbable situation they would do the same.

That brings us to The Notebook (film version). Viewers are unwittingly placed at the crossroads and must decide if leaving your fiance for the guy you knew for three months when you were teenagers 7 – 14 years ago is as morally repulsive as a pedophilia or acceptable like torture in unlikely, extraordinary circumstances. Most women, it seems, opt for the latter, which is romantically frightening.

Now that I’m revisiting this topic, I think perhaps I am being to hard on the film. I think that people — both men and women — just don’t have the wherewithal to stay in committed relationships any longer. Perhaps The Notebook is only a symptom of the disease and not the affliction itself.

I’m only bringing this up because the author based his book on his grandparents’ own love story. I gather that the grandmother picked the man she felt sparks with and could always talk to over the guy with political aspirations who treated her like an accessory.

I agree, James Marsden plays Lon so sympathetically that it’s hard to understand why Allie would choose anyone else. That said, most people understand that movie people leave fiance(e)s and husbands way too easily, for the sake of a dramatic weekend or summer with someone else, but that’s not how the majority of real people behave. At most, there’s an affair that peters out quickly.

You made the point that if Noah were a drug addict, viewers would understand he was the wrong choice. I think you’re overestimating how much reality people expect from movies, though. We’re more than willing to suspend belief to watch Harrison Ford outrun boulders, buses jump bridges, and pretty people dramatically leave their intendeds for “true love.” If the path to true love were too smooth, no one would make a movie about it, and we wouldn’t get to watch.

I think it was all about Noah’s love for her. The romance is more in the fact that this man loved her so much that he stood by her side, even when she was old and had no clue who he was. He visited her every day, read to her their story daily, hoping she would remember him and their life together, even if he knew that she would forget everything 5 minute later. He lived for those 5 minute he could have with her every now and then.
Remeber when their children told him to give up on her because she won’t remember them anyway? He said “no”, he can’t give up on her because “that’s my sweetheart in there” or something like that. That is true love and devotion.

but there was nothing redeeming about what they and only they shared… their social strata, and outside acceptance were key to there working out… it was in Lon’s proposal… they used what wasn’t them to bring them together, to define their relationship… they had no challenge whatsoever …accept one.

Lon and Allie were guided along by the people and circumstances outside of them… not dispite it ..Her circle of friends, her family were not doing that out of the love they saw, but by convention and more of a ‘good catch’ mindset…

Love is not an institution, it’s not engagement, marriage, the utility of a partner, the time together…

Love is undefined… to all but those who share it …the word may be the same… but that is it.

Now I don’t support Allie going behind her fiance’s back, and then sleeing w/ Noah…

…but the “key” to the story is that Noah, the one who regretfully, but understandably gave up …never gave up… the “key” being how what they shared found a loophole in time… by Noah doing what he promised.. and Allie realizing her fiance didn’t see in her something elemental, free… so I don’t know if you’d call what he had for Allie ‘love’… as what he did was noble, sincere, but not special..

..but when Allie saw that Noah never gave up… no one else, not her fiance, would do that. No one but those two could understand how special that was… and like I said… love is beyond conventional defition… so in that… was the love.