Whether you catch this classic gem on a quick yet boring afternoon, or a night by the fireplace, it always gets you hooked on a feeling, n’est pas? I watched it on a plane, in the sky, on a cold autumn night and even intermittently through a bright summer weekend. The feeling is always the same. You get a cheap but genuine thrill at Allie’s old school flirting attitude. You fall for Allie’s lusty-red lips and innocent bursts of happiness. You detect and appreciate chivalry on the spot, and hope the plot goes your way. You enter your fight or flight mode with every ‘negative’ scene popping in. You want to buzz off the flies that disturb the “marital” couple’s peace. You can’t, yet you still hope for the plot to go where you’d always wanted to go. Not that way, but your way, upon your dreams and own fantasies.

The Notebook is in your life whenever you want to dream, you need to fall in love, whenever you have no choice but fall, and have not option but rise and live the redemption thereafter. The Notebook is the clash of the lower and upper class ambitions, hopes and persuasions. Much like Titanic, except that the foreseen end fails to be ginormous, and thus implacable. The smaller story here clearly makes way for your own inserts of hope and magic into the plot. And that’s the magic of it! Hope. A clever keyword to mute the masses and elevate small egos. Cassavetes’s charm ramps up empowering you to dream with eyes wide open of taking his place in the director’s set. You’d wish they made love in the old house, you’d wish they shushed each other down with kiss and hugs. You’d wish -at some point- you yourself directed the movie towards your lust and own dreams. That’s how you fall for it, and that’s why you fall for it – because you have no choice. It’s THAT captivating. 

The plot is simple. The movie has seen feedback and ideas in numbers of billions from millions across the globe. Yet, every screening restarts the story brand-new. A simple story where skin-deep innocence blends with immense depth of emotion. A story where virgin meets mischievous and love meets money. A story where… quality has to face quantity. Your typical clash between extremes comes out raw, majestic and above all, humble – at heart. 

And yes, if your heart is humble, you jump in. With raised pulse, with dilated pupils on a barn scene and jumping feet for the street corner scene. With an extra beat for Noah and Allie, and with hope and confidence. You are sucked and suckered into the story so fast that you barely realize that you are actually neither Noah nor Allie; but that Cassavetes fellow fouled you well enough to make you believe you are. The line between fiction and reality becomes thinner and thinner. Your mind cannot see it, most of the times. Your own being pretty much molds with the story. You are one with it, as the hospital reunion scene triggers it. “Daddy, come home. Momma doesn’t recognize you, she’ll never understand; we miss you!”.

One risk that comes with the package: sometimes you get so stolen away with the story, that you unexpectedly attract a ‘Notebook’ in your own life. Or you become one. Your empathy either looks for its Notebook pair or becomes one, and your heart gets embroiled with the plot. Your days are fabulous until the night skies come and Dr Jeckyl becomes Mr Hyde. God wipes your tears at dawn, and fills your heart with love and hope throughout the day. You savor, once again, your love story through the day. You feel the dark approaching with every bite you eat and every glass you drink. Suddenly, love makes room for despair and desperation, and dark angels steal your serenity and your minds. You sleep and wake up with love again, in a very Sisyphus-style enterprise of hope. The difference – you are not aware of the Sisyphus part: you keep coming back, whether it’s 10 minutes after, or 3,000 miles away.

The movie lacks the finish, though. Are the characters happy with their choices? Is it ok to relive the same trauma every night for the sake of true love the next morning? Is Noah happy with the inflicted wounds cutting older scars every night? Is she better the following day? Is there an end to her trauma? Was Sisyphus the ultimate God of Endurance, inspiring centuries of despair for a better cause, and trans-mutating hopelessness into happiness, or merely a moron giving too many fucks to a lost cause?

Noah cannot give you these answers. In the lack of, as a true Notebook lover – you are bound to write your own sequel.