The Notebook returns to Netflix tonight

The Notebook is coming back to Netflix on July 18

The Notebook, one of the most famous romance movies of the early 2000s, returns to Netflix on Saturday, July 18.

The hit romantic drama will be available to stream on Netflix at 12:01 a.m. PT, so if you stay up late AND live on the West Coast, you can watch the movie as soon as it’s available to stream. This isn’t the first time the movie has been added to Netflix.

This film has accrued many awards over the years including the very unique MTV Award for Best Kiss. Ryan Gosling and Rachel McAdams deliver a powerful performance in a love story that fits all classical representations.

The story, set in South Carolina in the early 1940s, follows the journey of two lovers Noah Calhoun (Ryan Gosling) and Allie Hamilton (Rachel McAdams) who meet in their early teens and get to know each other through love and growth.

The story is framed effectively with its introduction: We see an older gentleman in a nursing home reading a story to an older woman. The story is told in flashback form and begins to reveal to the audience the intricacies of the events that these two individuals share. As the narrative unfolds, the dots begin to connect in order to finally reveal an intriguing twist.

Why The Notebook is problematic 

I find the decision interesting on the part of Netflix since The Notebook’s outdated politics of representation can be very problematic to certain young viewers. Granted, the filmmakers wanted to be faithful to a time in the American South that still involved servitude and racial inequality.

The filmmaker Nick Cassavetes (Faceoff, My Sister’s Keeper) was clearly unaware of these political problems in the early 2000s (although they were definitely present at the time). But it stands to reason that he made this film with passion and wanted to share a beautiful story of romance. It is clear though that politics and art are quite difficult to separate.

My assumption is that this decision on the part of Netflix’s distribution team could backfire given the current turmoil surrounding topics such as gender, sexuality, and especially race. This film is built in a world where only heteronormative romance is acceptable, and the African American actors that are present in the film are only given secondary roles that undermine their agency: nurses, servants, and helpers. The film represents white privilege without questioning its problematic presence in the South.

Moreover, Noah and Allie encounter difficulties in their romance because of their different economic backgrounds. It is no doubt that movies such as this one are under strong critical scrutiny. They simply do not withstand the test of time and the ever-shifting political landscape. Bit by bit, the ideals that The Notebook wishes to uphold will begin to wilt and the movie will only find an audience in a niche crowd of viewers who have decided to cling to old-fashioned representations of love.

What to consider while watching The Notebook

Although I am injecting a lot of my personal frustration with the film, I do think that it is important to watch it. But I do ask of you to consider something. If you end up watching or re-watching The Notebook in order to satisfy your curiosity about why it’s so popular, then do it. I think this movie is actually quite important as a milestone in our representations of love.

But I do urge you to have a conversation about what you think are other possibilities of love and representation in society. Despite the fact that this film is not primarily political, a lot of its undertones cast a dim light on what it means to be privileged and who is allowed to love. I think it’s important to remember that love consistently escapes any definition that assumes its universality. Love is subjective and unique to everyone.

The reason why I say that is because I believe that The Notebook is self-aware enough to accept its own timeliness. The movie is, after all, a representation of a bygone era of love, a response to a new generation of people who have come to judge romance and lifelong partnerships as secondary rather than divine.

The ideas of marriage, companionship, and everlasting love are being brought into question in a very subtle way, and the director is almost admitting to himself, with reluctance, that only a handful of these stories will stay alive.