Nights in Rodanthe

"I want you to know...that any man...is a fool...who doesn't know what he has...with you." (video)

Ah! Who wouldn't fall in love with Richard Gere after hearing such a line? I try to judge all movies within their own genres, and in the case of Nights in Rodanthe, I faked being excited about it for weeks and weeks beforehand, as if it were going to be the most exciting movie of the year. But Stephen Colbert did the same thing better on his show (video). He's the master, after all.

It had been out almost six weeks by the time I got to Massachusetts. Fortunately it was playing in nearby Methuen, at the megamodern multiplex known as Loews Theater at the Loop (map). Unfortunately for me, it turns out that Veterans Day---the day I chose to go see it---was a school holiday around here. I rolled into the lobby with only a few minutes before showtime to find it swarming with hundreds of kids is maniac groups, and a snaking long line to the box office. No doubt they were all going to see Madagascar: Escape 2 Africa or High School Musical 3.

Cripes. Think quick, M. I decided it was time to try out, for the first time in my life, the automated ticket kiosks that I had walked by so many times in the lobby. There were small clusters of people standing around them as well---a few of the kiosks were frustratingly out of order---but I managed to get to one after about two minutes. With about ten people clustered around me and breathing down my neck Mainland China-style, I swiped my credit card, navigated the menu, and managed to actually buy a ticket, which was promptly printed up and spat out into a little holder like a subway ticket. Eight bucks for a matinee. Oh, well, it's a Richard Gere!

Seconds later I've crossed the swarming lobby and am presenting my paper trophy to the obese teenage ticket taker.

"Uh, that's the receipt," he tells me. "You have to give me the ticket."

"But this is all it gave me," I protested. But it was no use. I quickly retreated back to the kiosk. After waiting again, I checked the tray, hoping it might still be there, but it was empty. Either I had left it there, or else the machine had malfunctioned.

Realizing that dealing with the management in this kind of hectic atmosphere would be a waste of time, and would no doubt cause me to miss the beginning of the movie (always unacceptable), I took the only option available. I bought another ticket for eight bucks at the same kiosk, this time making sure to get the real thing. Now I had spent sixteen dollars to see a movie that everyone in America was mocking except for middle-aged women with bad taste.

This put me in a really bad mood, which is not the way I like to go into a theater. But I sucked it up and went in anyway, grumbling and steaming. About a dozen other people were there for the show in one of the smaller auditorium theaters in the colossal multiplex.

I was so pissed off I wasn't sure I'd be able to settle down and "enjoy" the movie at all. Fortunately as the previews played, I soothed myself with an idea about how to save the day, which I'll get to later.

First, the movie. Did I mention that it has Richard Gere in it? I hardly need tell you the plot, because if you've seen the trailer, you get the gist. He's a doctor trying to escape his past. She's getting divorced and looking for a way forward towards her future. They've both given up on love, but over a long weekend on the Outer Banks of North Carolina, they find...each other. Diane Lane puts her favorite album on her stereo and does her dance of love. During the storm that follows, they fall into each other's embrace---all night long---as the waves pound harder and harder and harder, penetrating the supports of the beach hotel, and flowing deep into the sand of the dunes.

Ahem. In all seriousness, despite myself, I began to feel that the story was, to some degree, well-told and the movie was well-directed. By the midpoint I felt my cynicism about it melting away, and even thinking it wasn't bad for the kind of movie it was.

After the pair fall in love, Gere's character goes off to South America for a few months to find his estranged doctor-son and heal his past. What follows is about ten minutes of ultrahackneyed back-and-forth letter writing with voice overs of the two lovers gushing over each other. Letter writing with voice overs? In 2008? This really was a thick-coated fantasy, to be sure.

Then...goddammit...the movie really decided to play a gag. The gag was that one of the principal characters dies. I could go further, but that would be spoiling it. Oh, heck, you're not going to see this anyway, so I'll tell you. Richard Gere's character dies.

Fine. Like I said in my write up of The Secret Life of Bees, the Law of Human Sacrifice in movies has to be invoked to get from unhappy to happy in a drama. But not one of the lovers, unless you really know what you're doing! WTF? What a cheap, cheap way to end things. Brought to you by Kleenex.

In any case, if you're going to kill off one of the main characters, you better damn well foreshadow it well in advance, near the start of the movie, and give the character's death an inherent meaning in relationship to his/her life. A heroic character, for example, should die heroically---unless you're purposely making a statement to the contrary.

How does Gere's character bite it? He gets buried in a friggin' mud slide in a storm. What a horrible way to go! Does he die sacrificing himself for others? Uh, not really. In fact, he was foolishly trying to save precious antibiotics (so far, so good), but presumably they were buried in the mud too. Nothing along the lines of how his death helped save hundreds of others. Just a bunch of mud, burying him and the shards of Diane Lane's heart.

So there you have it. If you've seen the trailer, you've seen those waves pounding the beach in the storm---the storm of passion and love. What do they turn into later on? A mud slide. Yecch.

Storm of life...storm of death. See? I get it. But that means, in classical narrative terms, that the originally (love) storm was essentially the cause of his death. Had he not gone to the Outer Banks, and fallen in love with Diane Lane's character during that tempest, he would presumably still be alive. Passion is deadly, see? Stay away from it. Fear it! Respect the storm, baby!

In any rational storyline, Diane Lane's character would then be utterly heartbroken beyond repair by this, and probably worse off than if she had never fallen in love. Instead she is healed by the sight of magic wild horses on the beach.

I felt cheated---for the second time that day, and unlike the the ticket fiasco, this one would take a lot longer to wash the taste of it out of my mouth.

to be continued...