Analyzing The Movie 'The Notebook'

Film Analysis - The Notebook

Introduction

The film is portrayed in the past and present scenario setting. It is based on a young couple’s love and passion for one another, but are unexpectedly separated due to the disapproval of the teen girl parents and the social differences in their life. At the start of the movie, it displays a nursing home style setting with an elderly man named Duke (James Garner), reading to an elderly woman named Mrs. Hamilton (Gena Rowlands), whose memory is inevitably deteriorating. The story he reads to her is a love story about two teenagers named Allie (Rachel McAdams) and Noah (Ryan Gosling), that met in the 1940’s at a carnival in Seabrook Island, South Carolina. The two teens are from different cultural lifestyles,

The couple spent the summer together and developed the meaning of true love. One evening, Noah takes Allie, to an old farmhouse, tells her his dream of buying and restoring it one day, she tells him she wants to be a part of that dream, she wants the house white, have blue shutters, a wrap-around porch, and wants a room that overlooks the creek so she can paint. With all the excitement the two lost track of time and when she returned home she found out her parents called the police; her parents forbid her to ever see Noah again. Allies parents did not approve of the social differences in the teens upbringing. Allie’s mother moved her away to New York, for her to forget Noah, and interact with people of her social lifestyle at college. Noah wrote Allie for a year in hopes to hear from Allie, but her mother intervened the letters, so Allie never received them and the two never knew the love for one another and had no choice but to move on with their lives. Allie became engaged to a businessman named Lon, Noah bought the farmhouse and restored it

Noah uses his physical body working at the lumber yard whereas Mr. Hamilton uses known knowledge in providing wealth and fortune for his family. Both of these scenarios are related to what Hutchison describes as Wilber’s Theory; five major components for developing interior consciousness: levels of consciousness, lines of consciousness, state of consciousness, self-system, and fulcrum.

Psychological perspective focuses on the mental state of a person (Hutchison, 2015). Allie has become a victim in this situation as well as Noah, with the control her parents have over her life. Her parents feel using the intervention of moving Allie to New York; away from Noah, will end the love the have for one another and will allow her to engage with the diversity of people of the same type of social class as them. Allie was emotionally devastated and cried herself to sleep for a month until eventually she moved on with her life and found happiness again.

Noah and Allie are both from different social backgrounds, a higher class style of life and a lower class style, yet they both seem to be able to adapt to one another’s social gatherings without a problem. Noah knows the possibilities of cultural conflicts could arise with the different cultural lifestyles perceiving things in different ways