Fan mail: A Walk to Remember, Adam Shankman
Shane West and Mandy Moore as Landon Carter and Jamie Sullivan
in A Walk to Remember, 2002.
Promotional still
Not very long ago--just a week ago, a lot of nostalgia surrounded A Walk to Remember (the film, not the original source novel) has turned 15 years old. (That should be written 15. YEARS. AGO.) The default reaction would really be: Oh, wow, I feel so. Old. Like. VERY. VERY. OLD.
I read the book way before, and fell in love with how simple and default-cheesy-and-sappy it was, so I looked forward to the movie. I loved the trailer so much, though--in all honesty, I did have those misgivings about modernizing it (the novel set it in the 1950s) and having a very green Mandy Moore, and a not-appealing-to-me Shane West playing my beloved Jamie Sullivan and Landon Carter.
On another tangent, around the time I read A Walk to Remember the novel, I saw a student film where two female characters were frenemies of sorts and started a verbal catfight by dissing each other.
"Slut!"
"Whore!"
"Virrrrr-gggginn."
Then a long silence on screen, but the audience laughed out loud. It was funny; it was really, really funny to me, too.
But juxtaposed against the innocence of A Walk to Remember, that just really spoke to me about how something society in general used to value became something that derogatory now.
And so I think, in light of that, what the nostalgia for A Walk to Remember to me, is about is how much I have changed. How much I have grown up. And A Walk to Remember is still the same--young and innocent; cheesy and sappy, yes, but also earnest and pure. It's a simple thing from a simple time, and would that that lasted forever.
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