Tragedy and Redemption
CLASSIFICATION MC Mature Catholics
RATING Four of 5 Stars
Distributed by Warner Bros. and Village Roadshow (released on 26 September 2008)
97 minutes
The Film
Nights in Rodanthe is a film adaptation of the novel Nicholas Sparks having the same title. It was filmed in the small seaside village of Rodanthe, the northermost village of the inhabited areas of Hatteras Island as well as Carolina Beach in North Carolina. It is written for the silver screen by Ann Peacock and John Romano, and directed by George Wolfe.
The Preview
The Story
The film opens with the young girl Adrienne Taylor-Willis (Diane Lane) running on the beach towards her father who carried and spun her around. She wakes up from this dream into a life of a divorced mother, and hurries her two children Amanda (Mae Whitman) and Danny in time for their father Jack (Christopher Meloni) to drop by and pick them up for a vacation. Jack wants to go back with Adrienne and stay with him in Orlando, btu Adrienne wants it discussed when the kids come back.
Meanwhile, Dr. Paul Flanner (Richard Gere) prepares his last things and leaves the family house he sold after he and his wife divorced. He drives off to a barge on his way to Rodanthe in North Carolina where he had booked at a bed and breakfast inn by the sea.
Adrienne unloads her things on Jean’s ben as Jean (Viola Davis) is leaving for an extended trip, and Adrienne will be taking Jean’s place in managing the inn.
When Paul arrived, he finds Adrienne at the porch. She shows him the reserved Blue Room. At 7:30, she serves the supper but Paul transfers to the kitchen where she is preparing the salad because he prefers not to eat alone. So they dine together and get to know each other.
That night Paul recals the night he performed his last surgery for the day, and had to get off his son, Dr. Mark Flanner (James Franco). He also remembers the day her wife Jen left him after the divorce. That night, the patient he operated on died.
The following day, Paul went to visit Robert Torrelson (Scott Glenn), the husband of his patient who died on his table, only to find the recalcitrant son Charlie (Pablo Schreiber) who refused to allow him to see Robert.
In the town’s grocery store, Adrienne heard about the operation that killed Mrs. Torrelson, and knew that the surgeon was Paul. Back in the inn, Paul tells her that Mrs. Torrelson had a non-life threatening cyst on her face but still died on his operating table.
After dinner, Adrienne shows Paul her artworks at the attic. She also shows him a safe box she made from a drift wood. After a call from Jack, which left her fuming, Adrienne and Paul entertained themselves with a throwing session onto the garbage of Jean’s unhealthy pantry supplies.
The following morning, Robert and Charlie arrive to see Paul. He wants to know what happened during the operation. Paul tells him that she reacted to the anesthesis, which happens only one out of 50,000 cases. Robert insists his loss of his wife of 43 years when Paul tries to defend himself from blame.
Just after Robert and his son left, the storm came and fast. Adrienne and Paul need to do their best to keep the rainstorm from getting in as the light turn off. The place is in total darkness except for a flashlight in Adrienne’s hand. Just came in time to save Adrienne from a falling shelf. Alone in the dark, they made love.
Early the following day, Adrienne took the beach, feeling remorseful for not being with Danny, who had an asthma attack the previous night and is in a hospital. Paul decides to see Robert in his place. Adrienne comes with him. It is here that Paul appreciates the depth of Robert’s loss.
That night, a crab crack celebration is held at the wharf area to celebrate the passing storm. The singing, eating and dancing that the townspeople join progress into the night as a band of retired musicians and an old vocalist took country music into the air.
When the children arrive home, Adrienne makes it clear that she and Jack will not be going back together to Amanda’s tearful protest. Things go back to normal as Adrienne continutes to do her job as a mother of two and Paul his work in the hospital. Meanwhile Adrienne and Paul continue to write letters.
The day Paul misses his scheduled flight to visit her Adrienne wonders why he is not on the plane. The day after, Mark arrives bringing with him Paul’s things, or what’s left of it. He tells her of the change that Mark saw in Paul. And that Paul got consumed into the flood of mud when Paul tried to get some more supplies to take with them.Mark thanks Adrienne for giving him back to his father.
Inside Paul’s things, Adrienne finds an unsent letter from Paul telling her that he wants them to be together for life. The pain strikes her deep and she cannot seem to get over it.
Adrienne is deep in sorrow when Amanda and Danny come back from another vacation with Jack. Adrienne tells Amanda what really happened between her and their father. Adrienne told Amanda about Paul.
Amanda visits the inn to stay with Jean for awhile as she recalls all the beautiful things she shared with Paul there.
The film ends with Adrienne, while walking on the beach to ease up her sorrow on Paul’s death, as she found an unlikely sight on the beach–a herd of running stallions free and carefree to be what they are. She, accompanied by Jean, Amanda and Danny, bade goodbye to the memory of Paul at the wharf as the wind blew her face.
The Review
Nights in Rodanthe is a tragic romantic story of two divorcees who discovered love after living together for nights in Rodanthe. It deals with the issues of time among married couples, caeer demands, breaking up, and moving on with life. There is so much pain in the story. But there is also redemption and positive change that came out from that pain.
Divorce. The film proposes that divorce may be necessary and must be pursued when couples can no longer live as they have drifted apart through the years or one spouse abandoned the other for another. It tries to show that finding the right person to love after a divorce can happen. While the proposal is believable as presented in the movie, it remains to question how hard teh couples worked for their marriage, and if there is still something that forgiveness can do to help renew a difficult union. While abandonment may justify unforgiveness and divorce, Catholic morals decry divorce as a solution to marital difficulties, maintaining that everything is possible for couples who sincerely want to work for it through God’s grace. Since most marital problems are caused by lack of effective communication, viewers are invited to decide whether the grounds for separation in this movie are valid and justifiable.
Career. The film also correctly emphasized the dangers of so much commitment to professional work, leaving no time to one’s family. The film understands this, and attempts to emphasize the problems created when couples happen to choose wrong priorities in their married life. A physician who loves his work so much so as to leave him no time for his wife and child. That love becomes ironic in view of his decision to get married in the first place. The imbalance broke Paul’s family, estranging himself from his wife and his only son. The film however provided redemption form this family failure through the medical mission that both father and son have mutual interest and through which they rediscovered their relationship.
Professional failure. One of the sources of pain in this film is Paul’s professional failure that costs a wife’s life in a medical procedure he performed hundreds of times over and successfully. The pain of loss was overwhelming to the patient’s family, but eventually became a chance for Paul to learn compassion and for the surviving family to forgive… ironically through open and honest communication.
Children moving on. The film also explores the confusion and pain suffered by children of divorced parents, their hope of their parents’ eventual reconciliation that may never come. But redemption too came when the children understood that their parents may not be able to live together anymore because of past mistakes that broke the relatioinship for good.
The Verdict
Nights at Rodanthe is a move of pain and redemption, which Catholics may find very rich with lessons on married life and love. While it presented divorce in its positive picture, it is honest in portraying the pain of loss, of broken relationships, and the need to repair and heal the wounds left, and eventually achieve redemption. Despite its good parts, it is a typical Hollywood movie in handling sex.
The film can be educational to mature Catholics, but not recommended to teh young and less mature in their faith. It represents a two-sided blade for married couples as the positive outcomes of the story can be of the story can be educational as well as a source of temptations in justifying the easier course of separation, annulment or divorce in handling a troubled marriage.
Reviewed by Zosimo Literatus
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