Movie references

A Walk to Remember

Plot summary

Landon (Shane West), is your typical, popular, vain high-school heartthrob, without big plans for
his life. After getting into an accident with a classmate, Landon receives the punishment of having
to participate in a series of activities that up until then were completely foreign to his lifestyle: he
has to tutor disadvantaged kids on the weekend, clean the school, and participate in the drama club, where he will meet people who are the polar opposite of the friends that he had up until then (cultured, committed,…).

During rehearsals for the school play, Landon has no other option but to ask Jamie (Mandy Moore) for help. She is the son of a protestant pastor, and is usually made fun of by Landon’s friends for her appearance and the way that she dresses.

Little by little Landon falls in love with Jamie, and has to resolve the internal conflict posed by
the life he had led up to this moment with his friends and the transcendent life of self-giving that
he begins to share with Jamie.

Themes to discuss

1.- Transcendent vision of life

Landon and Jamie have two opposite positions on faith, and this is, in part, what makes them have initial concepts of human love that are totally different.

Landon doesn’t have a transcendent vision of life. He doesn’t understand what love is, nor does he see the meaning in suffering. Moreover, being abandoned by his father as a child left a very deep mark on him.

(min. 26)

Landon: “Wow. That is one scary lookin’…!”, looking at an image of Jesus Christ.

(min . 29)

Jamie: “I have faith, but don’t you?”
Landon: “No, there’s too much bad in this world.”
Jamie: “Without suffering there’d be no compassion.”

On the other hand, Jamie has a deep faith life that she knows how to defend in the hostile environment that Landon is part of.

(min. 13)

Landon’s friend: “If there is a higher power, then why is it he can’t get you a new sweater?”
Jamie: “He’s too busy looking for your brain.”

It is a faith life that permeates every moment of her life. It is a natural life, not fundamentalistic as it seems in the eyes of Landon’s friends. Jamie fosters a continual conversation with Him and with her father.

(min. 60)

Jamie: “How can you see places like this, live moments like this and not have
faith?”
Landon: “You are lucky to have it.”
Jamie: “It’s like the wind: I can’t see it but I feel it.”
London: “What do you feel?”
Jamie: “I feel the wonder of life, joy, love…It is the center of everything.”

(min. 25)

Jamie’s father: “I don’t like that boy. He’s the worst kind of boy.”
Jamie: “And what about forgiveness?”

(min. 48)

Jamie’s father: “It might not matter to you what I think but you should care about God’s opinion.”
Jamie: “I think he wants me to be happy.”

2.- True Love

This film received bad reviews from some film “experts” for coming across a little bit cheesy, sentimental and unrealistic, presenting a romantic love where adolescent feelings pervade everything. Nonetheless, even though it’s true that the movie takes place in a typical adolescent context, the form in which the love between the two main characters develops is the complete opposite of other adolescent movies (for ex.., GREASE).

In this case, the love that they display is a creative love, which builds the person up, makes him go out of himself; it is a love that creates bonds of mutual trust. Of course there is no need for an intimate sexual relationship during the stage of courtship in order to strengthen the relationship between the couple.

Landon’s attitude at the beginning manifests clear selfishness and extreme superficiality:

Jamie to Landon: “You don’t care about classes or graduating but you like school because
you’re popular and you’ll never be on top again. Your act only works on an audience.”
Landon to Jamie: “You don’t care what people think about you?”

From a superficial point of view, Landon is the successful one while Jamie is the school outcast, but on a deeper level Jamie maintains her internal freedom, feeling completely sure of what she does, while Landon, when he begins to dig within himself, discovers the fragility of his lifestyle.

The relationship between Landon and Jamie goes through the different phases of love between a man and a woman. First is the stage of “falling in love,” the sentimental attraction of one person toward another, which is independent of the will.
Landon feels attracted to Jamie not on account of her external values (friendships, beauty…), but rather because of something that not even he understands. This attraction is irrational, since it clashes head-on with Landon’s lifestyle up to that moment. The logical or “reasonable” thing that would be been coherent with his life would have been to feel attracted to a superficial girl, not to a girl with the depth of values that Jamie has.

At the beginning, Landon tries to get close to her while preserving the schema of values of his trivial world (min. 30, scene where Landon tells her that he wants to be friends without anyone knowing). This schema quickly falls apart and Landon moves to the next phase of falling in love, where he disregards his selfishness and everyone from his world in order to singularly seek the good of the person that he loves.

This is not seen only in his general attitude toward Jamie’s needs, but also in how he manages his sexual desire. If you are attracted to someone, you begin the process of falling in love in which it is normal for sexual desire to be awakened in moments of greater intimacy. Landon is able to radically change his behavior in this situation, which will lead him to have a more intimate relationship, integrating this impulse into a loftier design of caring and respecting the person, not seeing her as a mere object of pleasure.

When Jamie tells Landon about her incurable illness, instead of behaving like he would have before meeting Jamie (rejection, distancing, etc.), he devotes himself even more to her, trying to fulfill all of the dreams that Jamie still has (building the telescope). It is a sincere, complete love, which allows Landon to overcome his own selfishness even more (going to ask his father for help, who had abandoned the family when he was a child).