Nights in Rodanthe - BD
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Warner Bros. / 2008 / 97 / PG-13 / Street Date: February 10, 2009
You would think the perfect pairing of veteran talents and respective heartthrobs Richard Gere and Diane Lane would continually yield movie magic … but having now teamed up for the third time as a romantic couple in Nights in Rodanthe, it seems the sparks they once ignited together in Francis Ford Coppola’s underrated The Cotton Club some 25 years ago have finally dimmed. While the two actors remain competent and compelling leads, the material they’ve picked over the years has become decidedly less attractive. Although they convincingly played a struggling couple with marital problems in their last outing, Adrian Lyne’s Unfaithful, which earned an Oscar nomination for Lane, their latest pairing is about as melodramatic and overly saccharine as they come. Credit … or more appropriately blame for this goes to author Nicholas Sparks, on whose novel the film is based. With the possible exception of The Notebook, which was buoyed by fine and emotional performances from Gena Rowlands and James Garner, his works all tend to pluck at the heartstrings in an attempt to pull at the purse strings of those willing to buy into his predictable pablum.
Arriving in Rodanthe, Adrienne tells Jean about Jack’s desire to get back together, but her childhood friend seems to think she needs to move on. Jean leaves Adrienne with her thoughts and a big empty inn in which to ponder them. As luck would have it, there’s only one guest staying at the inn that weekend – a mysterious and seemingly secretive doctor named Paul Flanner (Richard Gere), who arrives early and catches Adrienne alone and misty-eyed on the back deck. She checks him in and offers all the hospitality she can muster, but he retreats to his room in silence. Later that evening during dinner, Paul confesses that he doesn’t want to eat alone and joins Adrienne in the kitchen. The casual conversation reveals that Paul is recently divorced and is estranged from his son. Adrienne tells him about her own situation and how much she would hate to disappoint her children. The two seem to have an immediate chemistry … maybe a bit too immediate for a movie that’s barely 90 minutes long. But Paul seems to be hiding a secret that he doesn’t want to reveal.
Torrelson, who previously refused to see Paul at his home, arrives at the inn and Paul is still unable to apologize for what he’s done. It takes Adrienne to make him realize that’s all Torrelson wants – to understand his grief and hear an apology – and it’s also what drove Mark away. The impending hurricane finally hits the area hard and Paul and Adrienne find themselves trapped inside, seeking each other for comfort. They fall into each others’ arms and (cue the music) fall in love. The next morning in the aftermath of the storm, Adrienne and Paul are left to pick up the pieces of debris surrounding the inn in a metaphor that couldn’t be more obvious even if it were spelled out in subtitles. Paul goes back to Torrelson’s home, with Adrienne in tow, and openly apologizes for his loss. After professing his love to Adrienne, he also explains how he needs to go find Mark and make things right with him, too. The two part ways and Adrienne returns home to deal with her own crisis of conscience. To wit, she needs to decide between staying in an unhappy marriage just to keep her children happy, or waiting for Paul to return from his reconciliation with Mark and begin a new life with him.
The Video: How Does The Disc Look? The one high point of this disc is its stunning video presentation. The film’s original 2.40:1 aspect ratio is presented in a glorious high-definition transfer compressed with the AVC video CODEC. This is a bright and colorful film-like presentation, courtesy of Affonso Beato’s lush cinematography, that really benefits from the higher resolution format and offers an image that is sharp, detailed and wholly pleasing to the eye. Color balance is particularly strong and consistent and there were no signs of compression artifacts, specks or blemishes. Details such as the fine grains of sand blowing across the beach during the opening sequence and the colorful beads that hang between rooms within the Rodanthe inn all pop off the screen and black levels were also deep, dark and inky. Flesh tones all looked natural and nicely-rendered. Overall, a superior and detailed film-like video presentation. The Audio: How Does The Disc Sound? For some inexplicable reason, Warner opted to forgo their usual fine lossless TrueHD 5.1 offering for a standard, lossy English 5.1 track on this BD. While I guess it could be argued that Nights in Rodanthe wouldn’t offer much in terms of discrete surround content, since it is essentially a dialogue-driven presentation, why not offer consumers the highest quality option available? The compressed 5.1 audio track that is provided does get the job done, but it’s a step back in terms of what the BD format can offer. Dialogue remains clear and concise through the center-channel mix and Jeanine Tesori’s original score is given a full and ambient soundstage with smooth bass tones. The one sequence where the full six-channel matrix gets to flex its muscle is during the hurricane when Adrienne and Paul are trapped inside the inn – doors and shutters bang and thump; glass shatters and smashes; and the howling wind outside pans from left to right and front to back. Otherwise, this is a pretty anemic and lackluster audio affair. The optional subtitles are in English, French, Spanish, and Portuguese. The Supplements: What Goodies Are There? Lacking a feature-length commentary track, the BD of Nights in Rodanthe offers a few interesting bonus features beginning with the first of a pair of featurettes titled The Nature of Love (21:22, 1080p) that includes comments from stars Richard Gere and Diane Lane, director George C. Wolfe (Lackawanna Blues), author Nicholas Sparks and singer/songwriter Emmylou Harris, who contributed the title track to the film. This is pretty much standard EPK-type stuff in which the group discusses their attraction to the project, what it was like shooting in and around the so-called Outer Banks area of North Carolina, and their idea of the perfect romantic film. While some of this is interesting, a little goes a long way and the barely half-hour feature soon overstays its welcome. The shorter and more focused In Rodanthe: An Intimate Look at Nights in Rodanthe with Singer/Songwriter Emmylou Harris (12:15, 1080p) is essentially a one-on-one interview between director George C. Wolfe and Emmylou Harris about her song contribution to the movie. But like the previous offering, it’s a bit long-winded … especially when considering it’s about three times as long as the song itself. Next up is a selection of five deleted scenes (7:20 aggregate, 1080p), each with commentary from director George C. Wolfe. These include: Haunted Beauty, Think I’ll Go For a Walk, Charlie Torrelson, A House Floating By and Song: Before I Met You. Most of these are either extensions of existing scenes already included in the film or quick cuts made for either time or content considerations. None are all that crucial or interesting, save for the final one: a complete performance of a song by a talented local singer who’s well into his 90s. A Time for Love: Keeping Up With Nicholas Sparks (11:25, 1080p) is essentially a brief profile of the prolific author, who in between writing best-selling novels also founded a school with his wife where he coaches the track team. This feature provides some insight into how Sparks comes up with ideas for his books and what interests him. He discusses how he currently has various book and film adaptation projects in the works and reveals that his next book is to be based on his cherished and well-trained German Shepherd. Watch out, Marley and Me! There’s also the complete music video for Gavin Rossdale’s song “Love Remains the Same” (4:09) that includes scenes from the movie. The BD also includes a digital copy DVD that allows you to transfer the movie onto portable media devices via a Windows-based PC or Apple’s video iPod, and offers downloadable content for players that are BD-Live enabled. The 97-minute film is divided into twenty-five chapters. Final Thoughts Sappy, predictable and manipulative, Nights in Rodanthe is yet another tepid tearjerker from writer Nicholas Sparks that squanders the talents of people like Richard Gere and Diane Lane – both of whom have been far better in previous pairings – for the sake of mediocre melodrama. Although the BD boasts a fine video presentation and a decent collection of bonus material, the disappointing audio presentation and film itself merit a “pass” recommendation.
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The next day Paul leaves early to run an errand and Adrienne notices a letter from a local man named Robert Torrelson (Scott Glenn) while tidying up Paul’s room. When she goes into town to buy some supplies in preparation for a severe hurricane, she learns that Torrelson recently lost his wife during a botched operation to remove a benign cyst from her face. Paul was, in fact, the attending surgeon and he later comes clean to Adrienne about his motivations for coming to Rodanthe. He explains that although Mrs. Torrelson’s death was due to a rare reaction from anesthesia, he was never able to own up to his responsibility and tell Mr. Torrelson to his face what happened in the operating room. Paul’s son Mark (James Franco), who is also a doctor, was there when Mrs. Torrelson died and he was the one who had to break the news to her family. Disgusted with his father’s inability to face his responsibilities, Mark left to work in a clinic in South America and Paul hasn’t seen or spoken to him since. Torrelson is suing Paul for malpractice, but it isn’t about the suit or damages – Paul needs to set things right with Torrelson, himself and his son.
Of course, nothing is ever as clear-cut in life, and the ending here may surprise a few expecting everything to be tied up with a neat little bow. Then again, the ending is also a typical tearjerker by design and something that’s about as manipulative as you can get in such melodramas. Personally, I thought it was pedestrian and contrived, on par with the now-clichéd moment when the killer or monster in a horror movie flinches one last time to make the audience jump before the credits roll. But that’s why people like horror movies and I guess it’s why people like these tearjerkers, too. Despite its slick production and a promising cast including everyone from Gere and Lane to people like recent Oscar nominee Viola Davis (Doubt) as Lane’s friend Jean, Christopher Meloni (Law and Order: Special Victims Unit) as Jack, and a weathered-looking Scott Glenn as Torrelson, Nights in Rodanthe is an uninspired, by-the-numbers affair that left me cold and aloof. Like the nameless hurricane that seems to arrive out of nowhere off the coast of North Carolina, the movie comes in and hits its mark, knocking over a few predictable targets, then drifts off leaving nothing of substance in its wake.
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