All you need is love

About a month ago, during my introduction class to my new graduate studies program we had a discussion about love. The class being taught by a doctor of philosophy created a very real and open debate about what love is? What true love is? If love is passion or comfort? What soul mates are? Question, after question about the what is so constantly considered the essence of life. But each question brought no solid answer, no scientific proof, no declared formula. There was a consensus that love was painful and that romantic love is not the only type that exists.

During this discussion, I was struck with an idea about how love is represented in our media. More importantly how first love, passionate love, romantic love is represented. This idea came to mind because the night before I had seen Dear John. I have seen three of the five thus far released Nicholas Sparks movies, the ever popular Notebook, the heartbreaking musically driven Walk to Remember and the heart wrenching Dear John. In that moment I had a thought about how when watching those movies, any of them about love from the perspective of the male character was a different experience than watching/ reading things like Twilight or The Broken Hearts Club of Buenos Aires. The novels are about love, the movies are about love. They are about a romantic relationship but is there something to be said about the fact that seems that from a woman's perspective the love interest, the male is an ideal. He is a body of perfection, yes there is something underlying about him. Maybe something dark, or troubling but in general there is a awing sense of perfection. While when looking at the love in Nicholas Sparks work you see that the love interest isn't so much ideal but rather a bundle of crazy imperfection that makes her inescapable. It's a very different feel of characters when you really study it, but to delve further into this in all these tales of love it's never just about the couple. There is family and friends involved, relationships outside of the main relationship that somehow affect the characters by making them stronger, weaker, more complete.

I explain all this because that was the night that I decided I needed to read a Nicholas Sparks novel. Because here I was comparing it to other movies based on books, but I had read those books. A movie is a visual representation of what the book was, but it is by no means a replica of the voice of the author. The experience of reading the original story is never the same as watching how a team of people envisioned the story. Don't get me wrong, I love it when movies are made out of my favorite books. Love it. Because it's a different variation of a story I already love, but I love both stories as different parts of the same cake. That night the decision was made and then I spent a few weeks trying to decide which book I wanted to read, I decided that I would read The Last Song before it came out on the big screen next week. It's a movie that I was hoping to see anyway, so added bonus figuring out if I liked the story. 

Before starting the novel I already knew that Nicholas Sparks might be well considered the Thomas Kinkade of love story novels. What does this mean? Thomas Kinkade has been described to me as a painter who figured out a way to do light paintings really well and just keeps doing that over and over again. It doesn't make his paintings any more or less wonderful to look at, it's just a techinque really. Nicholas Sparks has found a way to craft a story, I knew there was going to be a passionate love and I knew there was going to be a gut wrenching saddness. It's just the story he writes, at least that I have experience with, and he does it well so I knew what to expect.

An addict of the written word isn't even enough of a description for my distinct problem with starting a book and not being able to put it down. I started The Last Song last night at 1 AM and I finished it this morning at 10 AM. I cried from the hours of about 6AM to 9 AM for the end of the story. Around chapter 4, I knew things were going to sad in the end though I couldn't decide what the saddness was going to be I did make a deal with the book. I could take it if it was one character, I wouldn't be able to take it if it was a different character. I really don't want to give to much away, but it turns out that it was just as hard with the character I had decided I would be ok with. It wasn't a story that hooked me because I needed to know what was going to happen, I always sort of knew how it was going to end. It was a story that keep me engaged because the characters were like friends with a really good story to tell. I realized that love stories are not about the complex writing or the outstanding narrative. They are about the passion, the emotion, the feeling that drives a reader to be engaged and involved. Last Song does not disappoint, it was everything I expected but that's what also made it so comfortable and great. I can't wait to see the movie, even though now I cry even at the trailer that I've watched twice today. I know I'm going to be hiding in the back of theatre just sobbing at the end but hey sometimes we need a good cry, right?


Last Song Trailer!