A Walk to Remeber - A Story of Love

 It is 3:00 am and my mind is on fire. I just watched the movie “A Walk To Remember”, which has almost the same story line as the timeless classic “love story” written by Eric Segal. When I got this movie at Block Buster the lady at the counter told me that this movie was awesome and that she loved it. Even then I got a sense that this movie was about something deep. When I was watching this movie I couldn’t help thinking about “love story”. In both, a guy and a girl fall in love. The girl in both cases is intelligent, musically talented and beautiful. The guy purues, the guy proposes, they get married. A terrible sickness, cancer in both cases, befalls the girl. The girl dies. The guy is devastated. But there is one difference, “Love Story” is not a ‘story of love’, but “A Walk to Remember” is.

Ever since I read “Love Story”, and saw the brilliantly made movie based on which the novel was written, I have been mulling over some questions in my mind, “What is wrong with the novel?”, “Why does it make me feel desperate?”, “Why does it make me cry?”, “Why should two people who did everything right be victimized by the randomness of life and human condition?”, “Why is the end so devastating and haunting?”. It is devastating because there is no miracle. It is haunting because the capricious randomness of affliction casts a dark pall over every blossoming feelings of love. It is haunting to realize that love is subservient to the randomness of life’s traversities. So the most haunting existential question that “Love Story” taunted me with was this, “Is love limited by the traversities of life?”, “Is the idea that ‘love conquer all’ a myth or worse just plain rhetoric?”, “Is it possible that in my life I can do it all right and still be victimized just because the lot falls on my name?”. “A Walk to Remember”, gives a glimpse of the answer to all of these questions.

The problem with “Love Story” is that even though it is a story that evokes the most intense emotions out of the depth of ones heart. It does not have depth in itself. “Love Story” is not ‘story of love’, it lacks a meta-narrative. It has a narrative, a very intense one, but it has no alpha or omega. It says nothing about the people and their beliefs, it leaves the end just as it is, there is nothing beyond. The reader is left dangling in the middle of nowhere just as Oliver is at the end of the movie, with a lost look on his face, yearning to reverse time, is left nothing else but a haunting memory and one tag line ‘Love means not ever having to say sorry’. In her deathbed, all she could say is, “Hold me Oliver, hold me tight”. It appeared to be their final attempt to defy the inevitable, an attempt to make love triumph over life. And a failed attempt at that.

On the other hand, in “A Walk to Remember”, the girl is the daughter of a Priest. A very intelligent, talented and devout girl who in the prime of her life and its pursuits, realizes that she may not have long to live. She wishes for a miracle, she wishes to get married. She finds herself being pursued by a guy from a broken home who delights in perverted masochistic pleasures. She accepts the friendship but still they have conflicts in their faiths – she a theist and he a mocker of theists. As her strength wanes, their love deepens, he sees a depth in her which causes him to want be better than himself. He turns from his old ways and really learns to love life. The miracle she expects in her life never happens. She says that she does not have a reason not to be angry with God, but she still stays true to the love of God. He marries her and grants her second wish. In her death bed, she tells him. “I expected God grant me my first wish - to work a miracle in my life. I now see the miracle. I see that the miracle is you. God brought you into my life. He transformed you through me. You are my miracle. You are my angel.” She gives him a book of quotations and ask him to read her favorite one, “love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It is not rude, it is not self-seeking, it is not resentful”…gathering all her strength she repeats the words and with the most serene demeanor and a smile on her face. He is not left with a tag line, he is left with timeless truths and eternal relationships.

The pivotal difference between the two movies is that in the former there is no place for God or faith, where as in the latter God and faith become the foundation of their love. In the former when love was not longer present there was nothing left to make sense of all the capricious randomness and the angst. Where as in the latter, even as the tangible love disappears God and faith makes sense of the randomness and helps experience the miracle of the metaphysical love transforming the life of the guy into playing his part in the ‘story of life’, a story that has an alpha and an omega, a story where one isn’t left dangling in the middle of nowhere with the most intense feelings of lostness and anguish, a story where metaphysical love makes ‘real, cherished and eternal’ the love experienced in the tangible realm.