In the movie “The Notebook”, the meaning of unconditional love was emphasized through what happened in the characters’ experiences. It can be observed through the flashbacks that since the main characters were too young at the time they both met each other, they had the tendency to feel intense and aggressive towards their desire for companionship from their opposite sex which eventually lead to infatuation and affection. They have developed such intimate relationship bonded by love. Such love can be described as a common one.
Although their love for each other has been established, it is still not as strong as it ought to be. For an individual like me who grew up in a conservative society, I find it somehow aggressive how they developed such feelings in a small span of time as expressed by showing their affection for each other publicly. The thing which they call “love” was then challenged when the parents of the girl argued and demanded that the guy her daughter loved was not the one suited for her. At this juncture, I can barely see how fragile the foundation of their love is.
That with just a single misunderstanding, they tend to decide easily for a break-up, which is really so immature. It seemed so awkward how the girl decided to marry someone although she is aware how much she loved the other guy before. I felt pity for the guy with what happened. Forgetting someone is really difficult; because in forgetting you must remember what you need to forget, thus still remembering all the pain the woman brought him. After all the twists and turns of their love affair, at the end they still managed to come back in each other’s arms.
It’s so unrealistic but then I admired how they ignored everything around them and instead, focus on their feelings for each other. The scene which caught my feelings the most is when it was revealed that the old man who was chatting daily with the lonely old woman was the husband who loved her unconditionally, who even made a way on how the woman would remember what she wrote in her diary (the notebook which the old man carries with him during his visits to his wife) and he remained on his wife’s side despite of the woman’s psychological condition up until their death.
In a nutshell, I was touched with how someone wholeheartedly expressed love in the midst of all the consequences they have been through. Although it is way far from what we perceive as a platonic love, but it is still commendable. Such martyr love can be rarely seen in our society nowadays because some people tend to remember love as having something in return. And with that, we can summarize this with a quotation: “Love means to love which is unlovable, or it is no virtue at all; forgiving means to pardon that which is unforgivable, or it is no virtue at all; and to hope means hoping when things are hopeless, or it is no virtue at all”.
