Last Thursday my girlfriends and I made a group trip to the cinema to see Dear John. Unless you have a penchant for really bad romance films I would not advise seeing it. Put bluntly it is a poor man's Notebook. Despite what could potentially have been an interesting storyline about a long distance relationship during a war, and a contemporary one which is therefore much more interesting and controversial, it is both bland and badly acted. I haven't read the book, by Nicholas Sparks, so I don't know if the script was just a bad interpretation of the original text but it just lacked any real sense of connection between the lead actors. In spite of his previous filmography, which is mostly teen based dance flicks, Channing Tatum delivered a good performance (obviously aided by his exceptionally well defined set of abs and broad shoulders) but surprisingly the film was let down by Amanda Seigfried who seemed stiff and unresponsive to the emotional tenor of the fictional situation.
The one good point about the film is that it reminded just how romantic and emotionally engaging The Notebook is. Not only is the relationship between the lead actors actually believable and emotive but the tone of the film is beautiful, from the panoramic scenery, the soundtrack, the beautiful architecture of the house that Noah builds and the underlying thread of literary narrative. As an English student I love when books, art and particularly poetry are referenced in film, and the Notebook has an incredibly poignant and moving scene when Noah is reading aloud a Walt Whitman poem to his father and Allie:
Continuities (1891)
| Nothing is ever really lost, or can be lost, |
| No birth, identity, form—no object of the world. |
| Nor life, nor force, nor any visible thing; |
| Appearance must not foil, nor shifted sphere confuse thy brain. |
| Ample are time and space—ample the fields of Nature. |
The body, sluggish, aged, cold—the embers left from earlier
fires, |
| The light in the eye grown dim, shall duly flame again; |
The sun now low in the west rises for mornings and for noons
continual; |
| To frozen clods ever the spring's invisible law returns, |
With grass and flowers and summer fruits and corn.
|
The Notebook also features a timeless classic from Billie Holiday- 'I'll be seeing you'
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