The Sparks Oeuvre: A Walk to Remember (movie)

 

Tagline: She didn't belong. She was misunderstood. And she would change him forever. It all comes down to who's by your side.

IMDb description: The story of two North Carolina teens, Landon Carter and Jamie Sullivan, who are thrown together after Landon gets into trouble and is made to do community service. 

Roger Ebert review: 3 stars (he calls it "a small treasure")

Male protagonist: Landon Carter (Shane West)

Female protagonist: Jamie Sullivan (Mandy Moore)

Star supporting cast: Peter Coyote as Jamie's dad and Darryl Hannah (in a truly terrible wig, per the DVD commentary) as Landon's mom

Background: This film came out at the start of the second semester of my freshman year of college in January 2002. I feel pretty sure I saw it at the theater in Ephraim, UT but I can't find my ticket stub. However, I remember very clearly my BFF, Lindsay, and I being obsessed with it that summer when we returned to Pocatello. We rented it (bought it?) and watched it several times. We even watched it with the commentary from Adam Shankman (the Director) and Shane West and Mandy Moore. We were obsessed with the soundtrack (it slaps y'all). Lindsay even got her hair cut like Mandy Moore (not in the film, but in the "Cry" music video). Lots of nostalgia wrapped up with this one. I did my re-watch for this project with my friend Rachel and we had a great time watching it. 

As with Message in a Bottle, the basic story from the novel makes it's way to the screen. But once again, the medium of film brings the story to life and adds to it. First, the film swaps out the 1950s for present day; this change feels critical. Second, movie-Landon is more of a present-day cool kid (in the book he's Student Body President and planning for college, in the movie he's smart but doesn't really try at anything because that's not cool), and movie-Jamie gets a lot more personality and feels like a person rather than a device. 

The love story in Message in a Bottle was adult and earnest. In A Walk to Remember, it's two high school seniors falling in love so one might think that it's more simple, or trite, or even silly. While Theresa and Garret had to deal with very adult things in their adult relationship (dead wives, careers, different states), the obstacles Landon and Jamie face to their love are no less compelling or real; one just has to remember what it was like to be a teenager and to care what people thought of you and if you were cool. I don't entirely buy into school cliques and cliches because that wasn't my high school experience, but I do remember thinking what my friends would think if they knew I had a crush on a certain guy who wasn't our brand of cool. 

Landon thinks he knows Jamie because they've been in school together since kindergarten; he can list off outward things about her - she wears the same sweater, sits at uncool Lunch Table 7, tutors kids on the weekend, and looks at her shoes when she walks - that he thinks means he actually knows her. It's like when we stalk our crush on the internet; we find out things about them but it doesn't mean we know them. Jamie knows that's what people think about her and she doesn't care because she knows those are just things about her. Landon is amazed by this; all he does is care what his friends think about him. So much that he can't really be true to himself.  Jamie is a chance for him to forget about outward things and focus on real things. 

When Jamie takes her turn to assess Landon, she does so with deeper things than just his outward characteristics. She recognizes the part he plays as the cool kid in school who has no cares because he's "too young to die." Which is especially poignant giving that Jamie is herself dying (though he doesn't yet know that and neither does the audience). It's interesting that Landon gives no real thought to the future; his only goal for the future is to just get out of Beaufort. He sort of lives in the moment. Jamie of course does think of the future because she knows she's sick and hers is limted. When she decides to take a chance on Landon, their first date is all about Landon having her live in the moment and Jamie having him think more concretely about the future. When he's confronted with her sickness he has to really think about the future, but he also finds a way to be present and in the moment with Jamie in her final months and that's really lovely. 

That's why I love their love story. Lots of romances and love stories (even many by Mr. Sparks himself) have intense passionate love (what T. Swift would call red love). Landon and Jamie's is no less full of passion, but it's more stable and built on shared respect, support, and love. They bring out the best in each other and support one another (what T. Swift would call golden love). To learn, feel, and have that kind of love at 18 feels pretty remarkable, and that it's pulled off with such care throughout the film is pretty remarkable.  

Lots of credit for the film goes to the director, Adam Shankman. He had only directed one film before this one, the Jennifer Lopez delight The Wedding Planner. But he was already known in Hollywood for choreography - he choreographed the out-of-nowhere prom dance sequence in She's All That and the Buffy musical episode "Once More With Feeling". He doesn't do anything terribly flashy with the camera, but he is able to get great performances from his leading actors. With his choreography and music background, I feel like he was particularly a good choice for relatively new to acting Mandy Moore, who had this point was mainly a pop star with only a small part in The Princess Diaries on her resume. At times you can tell she's working hard (the credits list "Mandy Moore acting coach", no shame, kudos to her for working on her skill) to convey all the right emotions. There's only one scene where I feel like she gets it slightly wrong, and that's when she tells Landon she's sick. He first misunderstands her as not feeling well based on the way she phrases it. When he says he'll just take her home and she'll feel better, she responds angrily as it it's his fault he's misunderstood her and it feels off to me; her tone needed to be more heartache than anger in my opinion. But she mostly plays Jamie as sincere, but also confident. 

Music and wardrobe really have an impact on the story as well. The soundtrack is absolutely killer, with perfect songs at the perfect moments. The New Radicals singing over the montage of Landon practicing and rehearsing for the play, ending with him and Jamie passing in the hall IS SO PERFECT. Who doesn't remember being in high school and waiting for the moment(s) in they day when you would pass your crush in the hallway?! And wardrobe. I mean Landon in button-ups and baseball shirts is swoon worthy, and is epitome of cool guy. Jamie dresses simply but not frumpy; she is consistently and emphatically herself with her "uncool" outfits. She's always in stark contrast to the two "cool girls" that are part of Landon's friends group, and, thankfully, never has to suffer the indignity of having a makeover or changing her wardrobe once she starts dating Landon. 

In the book, Jamie always has her in a bun UNTIL she starts dating Landon, at which point he comments that she starts wearing it down. In the movie Jamie is always wearing her hair in a low ponytail UNTIL she starts dating Landon at which point she starts wearing it down (or in a half pony sometimes, which honestly looks great). Nevermind that I think this is dumb because guys rarely IMHO notice things like that (and also I personally hate wearing my hair down) and why would Jamie even think about that every day, but whatever this was written by a guy who seems to think hair is an important part of a couple's relationship. (Not that hair isn't important....who hasn't drastically cut their hair Felicity-style after a breakup?! I just feel like Sparks gets the sentiment of a woman's relationship to hair in our relationships wrong - it usually changes as a result of a bad end not a fresh start. Thank you for coming to my Ted Talk.)

(Random aside: when I watched the DVD commentary, Adam Shankman said he actually received complaints that having Jamie in a ponytail perpetuated the stereotype that unattractive women wear ponytails. He was so taken aback because, he said, if that was true then why did he have Jennifer Lopez, an objectively beautiful woman, in a ponytail basically the entirely of The Wedding Planner?!)

Minor changes from page to screen include Landon being estranged from his dad because his parents are divorced, rather than his dad just being gone all the time because he's a Senator; the play is put on by the school in the spring instead of by the church at Christmas time; Jamie's dad, Reverend Sullivan (a great Peter Coyote), is a lot more likable and isn't crazy old (in the book he married a younger woman later in life and was quite old); and there isn't a weird family grudge between Landon's grandparents and Reverend Sullivan. Still the same: Landon's terrible friends.  

The film is lovely and overall tells a better, more complete and engaging love story than the novel through direction, acting, music, and wardrobe. I say definitely give this one a watch. 

The Sparks Oeuvre: A Walk to Remember (novel)

 "You have to promise not to fall in love with me." Jamie Sullivan, a religious and very self-aware teenager, says this to Landon Carter, a popular and unknowing teenager, after he asks her to the homecoming dance. And with that, we know that fall in love with her is exactly what Landon is going to do. 

A Walk to Remember was Sparks' third novel, but my second to read/review because I'm going in order of the film adaptations. Whereas Message in a Bottle was about mid-adult love, A Walk to Remember is about young high school love. The aforementioned Jamie and Landon have known each other their whole lives going to school together in Beaufort, NC. However, Landon is more "worldly" and popular while Jamie is religious and everyone makes fun of her (the only way this makes sense to me is because the characters are in high school, but even still I think it's a stretch). When Landon ends up having to star in the local Christmas play opposite Jamie, he begins to see her differently than just the girl that wears brown cardigans and her hair in a bun every day. They fall in love against the odds of differing life views and truly terrible high school friends. However, Jamie is dying of leukemia and Landon, faced with losing the one person he's ever loved, doesn't know what to do. Eventually he decides to help her fulfill the one dream she's ever had. And then...the book is ambiguous if/when Jamie dies but it's implied. 

Sparks again uses a framing device to start and end the story. Landon tells the story in first person, looking back on the events of forty years ago when Jamie changed his life. The "voice" Sparks adopts in the writing for Landon can be annoying, as he kept saying "if you know what I mean" about all sorts of things. The setting is also 1959, which.....ok, I guess? There isn't really a need for this, and at times I felt like Sparks forgot the setting he had set his own book in; he referenced Landon driving all the time and calling people on the phone. I know those things existed in 1959 but I don't think they were as prevalent as they seem to be in Landon's life.

Landon at first only really notices Jamie when she's in the role of the "angel" in the play - her hair is down instead of in a bun and she's wearing make up and beautiful dress. He makes note of her looks ALL. THE. TIME. As if she's not worthy of being loved because she's "plain" and wears a bun. Seriously, the bun and her hair being worn down are mentioned a lot. I'm harping on this a lot, I know, and I give Sparks some serious flak for being obsessed with how his female characters look when I do the same thing with men. What can I say, I'm complicated and it's a complicated issue and we're all full of multitudes of contradictions (shrug emoji).

Anyway, the story is short and broad, and uses Jamie less as a character and more as a device for everyone else to realize how they can be better. Forgiveness is a big theme. Recognizing that people are more than what we assume they to be. And that when you learn someone is dying, start being nice to them. Or maybe you should always be nice to people...because we're all basically dying? I don't know, just be nice to people that aren't like you. 

The Sparks Oeuvre: Message in a Bottle (book)

Message in a Bottle the novel uses a framing device to start the story. It's told in third person, beginning with Theresa thinking back on the events that are going to happen in the story. I don't really think this device is necessary, and it feels a bit like a crutch to make events in the story be shrouded in mystery. 

The thing with Sparks is that he isn't a terribly great writer. His prose feels more perfunctory than poetic, rote instead of riveting. He often explains exactly what a character is doing. Theresa set the table. Theresa got salad dressing from the refrigerator. He also constantly describes what a character is wearing, as if that's a key to their personality (not to say costuming isn't important, but probably more so in a visual medium...like film). He actually wrote "For some reason Garret couldn't sleep well that night." as the last sentence of a chapter. For some reason, as if Sparks isn't the creator of everything going on in Garret's head. 

If I had read the book first, I likely would have been completely surprised at the casting of Kevin Costner for Garret. At the most basic level, he's too old to play Garret; Costner was 44 and in the book Garret is no more than 32. He's a young guy who got married young to the love of his life and lost her too soon. That is not Costner at all. However, since the film really only takes the bare bones story of Message in a Bottle, Costner's version works for the story told in the film. Mostly. He does seem a bit old to have a "young" wife just getting pregnant. But the rest of film-Garret works better than novel-Garret. 

In the novel, Garret is supposed to be clinging to his dead wife. So much that he can't progress in his relationship with Theresa. I don't ever really feel this. In the movie, we get great visuals of Catherine's things still being the house. In the novel, we're just told that Garret isn't over her. We also get a series of dreams, which made me roll my eyes because nowhere else other than novels and movies do characters have such exact, personal dreams. 

Truth be told, the tension in the novel is mostly how they each have lives and careers in different states. Neither can just up and move to the other's city without changing their whole world. In the book that feels like the real issue keeping Garret and Theresa apart, whereas in the movie it's definitely that Garret hasn't let go of Catherine. 

Sparks is also deeply into gender roles and a little bit sexist. He can't describe Theresa without mentioning her slim figure or the way her clothes "highlight her figure". She's basically described as a spinster divorcee who has given up on dating post-divorce because all the men are crap. Theresa also claims her son, Kevin, has no father figure even though he HAS a dad that he sees, a dad who takes him on trips and such. I don't know, that just bothered me. 

The novel's relationship is a bit longer and a bit more invested in by both parties. Theresa visits Garret several times, he comes up to Boston to see her several times. They talk about marriage. In the movie, the timeline is compacted - the trip where Theresa first meets Garret, then he visits her once in Boston, and then misunderstanding. But since the actors play the roles with deep emotion and chemistry, I completely believe that they yearn for one another and are meant to be, even with the short timeframe. 

There are several other minor changes, like Theresa's boss being a male in the movie adaptation, and Garret's dad having a noticeably bigger role (I mean, it's Paul Newman so of course). Theresa's son's age is a little bit younger, Garret restores and fixes boats but in the novel he owns a diving shop. None of these make any sort of difference, but for the story that is told in the movie they work. 

For Message in a Bottle, the story of Theresa and Garret feels more true when the actors bring it to life, elevating Sparks' mediocre dialogue to genuine emotion. In this case, I'd probably skip the book because it doesn't bring anything extra to the movie. 

The Sparks Oeuvre: Message in a Bottle (movie)

Tagline: A story of love lost and found.

IMDb description: A woman discovers a tragic love letter in a bottle on the beach, and is determined to track down its author. 

Roger Ebert Review: two stars

Female protagonist: Theresa (Robin Wright Penn)

Male protagonist: Garret (Kevin Costner)

    in the novel it's spelled Garrett

Background: This was the first film adaption of a Nicholas Sparks novel. However, it wasn't Sparks' first novel. That was "The Notebook", which came out two years before. Message in a Bottle came out February 1999, less than a year after the novel was published. My guess is that, since Kevin Costner was a producer, he had optioned the book and had it in development well before the book was published (and that's why it came out before The Notebook).

Theresa (Robin Wright), a columnist for the Boston Globe, discovers a message in a bottle while she's on vacation in Cape Cod. She's recently-ish divorced (the movie starts with her dropping off her son to spend the summer with his dad, his new wife, and their baby). The words of a man writing to the woman he loves (his "one true north") speaks to her. After showing it to her coworkers and editor, the letter is published. The letter strikes a nerve, and Theresa receives lots of mail about the letter. There's even another letter discovered! Through some investigation (which now seems so quaint because the internet wasn't really a thing at this point in '99), aided by coworkers at the newspaper, she discovers the name of the letter-writer and where he lives. 

In no time she's on her way to his sleepy coastal town, and they have a somewhat meet-cute at the dock where Garret (Kevin Costner) is restoring a boat. Out of the blue (or is it fate?) he invites her to go sailing with him early in the morning. She leaves her jacket on the boat, he has to return it. So he shows up at her hotel and their interaction feels so real. He's awkward, she's awkward. These are two people that haven't dated in a long while, and even though they clearly have interest in one another they feel a bit unsure and scared of what it means. 

Costner plays Garret so well. He's aloof, but not in a bad, uninteresting way. He plays the hurt the audience knows he has quietly and subtly, and you can understand why he was probably interested in the role (however, spoiler alert, it is much different than the novel version of Garret which I will discuss when I compare/contrast). 

What I like about the relationship between Theresa and Garret is how adult it feels. Both are "older" (Costner was 44 and Wright was 33, which is very different from their ages in the book....will discuss later). These are two people that have experienced love, marriage, death, divorce and have their own well-established careers and lives that they're leading. I guess I just feel those struggles of dating as a 38 year old that I didn't when I was 16 and saw the movie in the theater. When Garret comes up to Boston to visit Theresa, he sleeps on the couch because she has her son with her that weekend. When the son leaves the next night and they are alone, Theresa says something about having to get used to someone else being in her home. 

The screenplay is very vague about what actually happened to Garret's wife, Catherine, and how she died. There's also some weird family drama between Garret and his former in-laws. They, along with the secret Theresa keeps of finding Garret's message in a bottle, provide the tension and conflict in the movie. The family drama does help fill in some of Garret's character and backstory, so I'll let it go. And thankfully Garret's discovery of Theresa having his messages and bottle meant for his dead wife is only a minor obstacle; it's honestly almost an afterthought most of the movie even though it propels the action. 

Paul Newman, playing Garret's dad, steals every scene he's in. The producers really lucked out in getting him. 

As a first foray into Nicholas Sparks adaptations, this sets a pretty good tone and fairly high bar. It also has all the standards that we've come to know from "A Nicholas Sparks Movie" - a coastal setting, attractive people falling in love, miscommunication, love, death, a single dad. What I like about the movie is how earnest it is; how naturally the relationship plays out. I recommend it. 

The Sparks Oeuvre

The past couple weeks I had conversations with two different groups of friends about Nicholas Sparks movies. I guess I'm somewhat of an apologist, because I have generally enjoyed some of the films. I go into the theater knowing what I'm going to get. At this point, more than a decade after the first movie adaption came out, "a Nicholas Sparks movie" is a type of short hand for a romantic and melodramatic movie (exclusively, at this point, about attractive and thin white people) that involves love, time, lost connections, and almost always death. Sometimes it's done and well and sometimes it's not, but my bar for judging them is always based on "for a Nicholas Sparks movie". 

Between one of the conversations with friends I watched The Lucky One. After I did what I normally do-- check to see if Roger Ebert had written a review of it. He HAD! Surprisingly (but also not surprisingly because Ebert was a very fair critic who loved film) he gave it a very decent review; he recognized it for what it was and judged it based on that. 

Nicholas Sparks has a good line in stories like this. They usually involve the triumph of love over adversity, are usually set in beautiful natural settings, usually involve such coincidences as finding a message in a bottle, and usually make me stir restlessly, because such escapism is shameless. Still, credit must be given to a film that delivers the goods, and if you've ever liked a Nicholas Sparks movie, you're likely to enjoy this one. I've seen him in interviews where he's better-looking than some of his leading men and comes across as sincere. I think he really does believe in his stories, and I think readers sense that.

After that, I ended up watching Message in a Bottle after the second conversation with friends. I decided to start at the beginning of the Nicholas Sparks oeuvre, and while I was watching I thought back to my freshman English class at Snow College. The theater department was putting on a staging of "Of Mice and Men" and the teacher had us read the John Steinbeck classic, watch the '92 film with Gary Sinise and John Malkovich AND watch the play and then write up a paper comparing and contrasting. 

So I decided to do that with Nicholas Sparks movies and novels. I was sure The Notebook had been first, but it was the first novel whereas Message in a Bottle was the first movie (The Notebook was the third film adaptation after A Walk to Remember). I'm going to go in order of the movies. I don't know if I'll watch the movie first then read the book, but that's currently the status for Message in a Bottle. I'll have a writeup of the movie and book when I finish. Follow along with #TheSparksOeuvre 

    

		Movie Release	Novel Release	Novel Order
1	Message in a Bottle	1999	April 1998	2
2	A Walk to Remember	2002	October 1999	3
3	The Notebook	2004	October 1996	1
4	Nights in Rodanthe	2008	September 2002	4
5	Dear John	2010	October 2006	5
6	The Last Song	2010	September 2009	8
7	The Lucky One	2012	September 2008	7
8	Safe Haven	2013	September 2010	9
9	The Best of Me	2014	October 2011	10
10	The Longest Ride	2015	September 2013	11
11	The Choice	2016	September 2007	6