A Walk to Remember
Plot
When a prank on a fellow high school student goes wrong, popular but rebellious Landon Rollins Carter (
Shane West) is threatened with expulsion. His punishment is mandatory participation in various after-school activities, such as tutoring disadvantaged children and performing in the drama club's spring musical. At these functions, he is forced to interact with quiet, bookish Jamie Elizabeth Sullivan (
Mandy Moore), the only daughter of their church's pastor, and a girl he has known for many years but to whom he has rarely if ever spoken. Their differing social statures leave them worlds apart, despite their close physical proximity.
Landon has difficulty learning his lines for the spring play, so he asks Jamie to assist him. She decides to help him but under one condition: Landon must promise not to fall in love with her. He chuckles at the strange request, obviously doubting that he could ever fall in love with her.
Landon and Jamie begin practicing together at her house after school. As they spend more time together, a friendship begins to develop. Landon discovers that Jamie’s wish list of everything she aspires to accomplish in life includes befriending someone she doesn't like, getting a tattoo, being in two different places at once, and making a telescope so she can see a special comet that is coming, but she doesn't tell him her number one wish. One day, Jamie approaches Landon when he is hanging out with some of his friends. When Jamie asks if they are still on for practice that afternoon he smirks and replies, "In your dreams." His friends laugh and Landon's smirk falters as Jamie feels betrayed and embarrassed. That afternoon, Landon arrives at Jamie's house, hoping that she will still agree to help him. But she refuses to let him in, and asks him in a sarcastically sweet voice if he wants to be "secret friends." She slams the door in his face when he agrees. Landon eventually learns the script by himself.
During the play, Jamie astounds Landon and the entire audience with her beauty and singing voice. Landon, clearly surprised and overcome with unexpected emotion, kisses her at the end of her key song, "Only Hope." After the play, Landon is approached by his father, who walked out on him and his mother when he was very young. When he turns to go, his dad calls after him not to walk away. "You taught me how," he says simply, and leaves.
In the following days, Landon tries to get close to Jamie, but she repeatedly rejects him. The breaking point comes when a few of Landon's so-called friends play a malicious joke on Jamie. (The prank consisted of a photoedit of Jamie's face onto an almost pornographic image and its distribution.) She is about to cry in the middle of the cafeteria when Landon comes to her aid. He punches out one of his now ex-friends and literally turns his back on the group, takes Jamie out of the cafeteria, and, when they're outside the school, apologizes about the group, calling them "animals".
In his car at her house, he asks her out to dinner, but she replies that she is not allowed to date. He goes to her father in the church and asks him for permission. When her father says no, Landon apologizes for the way he has treated Jamie in the past and asks for her father to have faith in him. The man begrudgingly agrees, and Landon takes her out to dinner. Despite his reluctance at first, she convinces him to dance with her. Even though Jamie still doesn't want to reveal her number one wish, Landon reveals his number one wish to be leaving his hometown, to which Jamie points out that it's not about leaving, but more about figuring out what to do when he gets there.
Landon then sets out to help her accomplish a few things on her wish list. He takes her to the state line and positions her over it, with one foot on each side of the line. When Jamie asks him what he's doing he tells her, "You're in two places at once." He also gives her a temporary tattoo of a butterfly. While walking along a boardwalk, Jamie asks Landon how he could have such amazing moments and not believe. She explains her faith to him eloquently. "I might kiss you," he says. And he does. He then tells her that he loves her, but she doesn't reply right away. When he prompts her, all she can say is "I told you not to fall in love with me..."
As their relationship grows, Jamie's father confronts her. He tells her that her behavior is "sinful." She argues that she is in love with him, and her father looks her straight in the eye. "Then be fair to him, Jamie. Before things get worse."
The couple meets up at the cemetery where Jamie goes to stargaze and they spend the night waiting for Pluto to rise. Landon tells Jamie that he had a star named for her. She tells him for the first time that she loves him, and he finally realizes something that he has been trying to find out for a while: Jamie's number one wish is to marry in the church where her parents were married.
One evening, Jamie finally tells Landon that she has terminal
leukemia and has stopped responding to treatments. He is initially upset, but she says that the reason why she didn't tell him was because she was moving on with her life and using the time she had left. She says that she was doing fine until they fell in love. Jamie starts to break down as she says, "I do not need a reason to be angry with God" and runs away.
Landon goes to his father and asks him to help Jamie. His father hesitates, as leukemia is not his specialty, and says he needs to examine her and know her medical history before he could do anything. Landon leaves, angry and bitter. On the way home, he tears up as the situation sinks in.
Eric, who was Landon's best friend but had also participated in the prank on Jamie, comes and tells him how sorry he is and that he hadn't understood. Landon leaves dozens of flowers on Jamie's doorstep and asks her father to tell her that he's "not going anywhere". The pair makes up soon after.
Jamie's cancer gets worse until she collapses one day. Her father rushes her to the hospital where he meets Landon. Landon doesn't leave Jamie's side until her father practically has to pry him away. The next day, Landon comes to the hospital and sees Jamie being wheeled out of the ward. He asks what's going on and she replies by asking him to thank his father for the help. Apparently Landon's father arranged to pay for private homecare for Jamie. Landon is stunned and, later that night, goes back to his father's house. He whispers "thank you" and his father hugs him. With all the exhaustion and fear over Jamie's situation and years of hurt about his parents' divorce on his shoulders, Landon breaks down in tears in his dad's arms.
Landon continues to fulfill various wishes on Jamie's list, including building her telescope. Her father, who now approves of him, helps out, as does Dean. After Jamie sees the comet through the telescope, Landon proposes and Jamie accepts. They marry in the church where her parents were married. With the wedding, Landon has completed everything on Jamie’s wishlist, and then she died months after their wedding.
Four years later, Landon visits Jamie's father and tells him he has finished college and has been accepted into medical school. He then gives Jamie's father a book that Jamie had given to him. He tells her father that he is sorry he could not grant Jamie's ambition to witness a miracle before she died. Her father replies that Jamie did see a miracle. "It was you," he says with a fatherly smile.
In the end, Landon remarks that Jamie not only saved his life—she taught him everything about life, hope and the long journey ahead. He ends his monologue by saying that Jamie and his love is like the wind. "I can't see it, but I can feel it." The film ends with' Landon standing on a dock, staring into the sunset and smiling, as "Cry" (by Mandy Moore) plays into a fade.
Background and production
The inspiration for
A Walk to Remember was Nicholas Sparks' sister, Danielle Sparks Lewis, who died of cancer in 2000. In a speech he gave after her death in
Berlin, the author admits that "In many ways, Jamie Sullivan was my younger sister". The plot was inspired by her life; Danielle met a man who wanted to marry her, "even when he knew she was sick, even when he knew that she might not make it".
[1] Both the book and movie are dedicated to Danielle Sparks Lewis.
This movie was filmed in
Wilmington, North Carolina at the same time as
Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood (2002) and the TV show
Dawson's Creek were being filmed there. Many of the sets were from the TV show
Dawson's Creek (1998) - particularly the school, hospital and Landon's home. The total shooting time was only 39 days, despite Mandy Moore being able to only work 10 hours a day because she was a minor.
Daryl Hannah wore a brown wig, over pink hair from another movie, that closest matched Shane West's hair in the movie when playing her character. Hannah also had collagen problems which made her lips swollen. By the end of the movie, however, the symptoms were less obvious.
[3]
Cast
Box office
Reception
The film was generally met with negative reviews by critics. Entertainment Weekly retitled the movie "A Walk to Forget"
[4] and the average rating of 101 professional reviews as compiled by
Rotten Tomatoes is 4.1 out of 10.
[5] However,
A Walk to Remember found a warm reception in the Christian community due to the film's moral values; as one reviewer approvingly noted, "The main character is portrayed as a Christian without being psychopathic or holier-than-thou".
[6] Roger Ebert praised Mandy Moore and Shane West for their "quietly convincing" acting performances.
[7] Even though not a critical success, it was a modest box-office hit, earning $41,281,092 in the
United States alone,
[8] and a
sleeper hit in
Asia. The total revenue generated worldwide was $47,494,916.
Awards
| Year | Ceremony | Category | Result |
| 2002 | MTV Movie Awards | Breakthrough Female Performance | won by Mandy Moore |
| 2002 | Teen Choice Awards | Film — Choice Breakout Performance, Actress | won by Mandy Moore |
| 2002 | Teen Choice Awards | Film — Choice Chemistry (Moore/West) | won |
| 2002 | Teen Choice Awards | Film — Choice Actress, Drama/Action Adventure | nominated for Mandy Moore (lost to Natalie Portman) |
At the MTV Movie Awards, Moore won the "Breakthrough Female Performance" for her role.
Soundtrack
The movie's soundtrack features five songs by Mandy Moore and others by acts
Switchfoot,
Rachael Lampa and many more.
The lead song "
Cry" was originally released on Moore's second studio album
Mandy Moore. The soundtrack also includes two versions of Switchfoot's song "
Only Hope" including the version Moore sang in the film.
Mandy Moore's manager
Jon Leshay, the musical supervisor for
A Walk To Remember, "instantly wanted" Switchfoot's music to be a vital part of the movie after hearing them. He later became Switchfoot's manager.
[9] When they were approached to do the film, the band was unfamiliar with Moore or her music (despite her status as a pop star with several hits on the charts). Before their involvement with
A Walk to Remember, Switchfoot was only recognized in their native San Diego and in Contemporary Christian music circles, but have since gained mainstream recognition, with a double platinum album,
The Beautiful Letdown which included hits such as
Meant to Live and
Dare You to Move.
IN - Complete (Dancing in the moonlight is left out) Listing of Music in the Movie
[10]
- Cannonball — written by Kim Deal, performed by The Breeders
- So What Does It All Mean? - written by Shane West, performed by West, Gould and Fitzgerald
- Empty Spaces — written by Carl William Bell, performed by Fuel
- Lighthouse — written by Jeral Vince Gray and Percy E. Gray Jr., performed by Mandy Moore
- Friday on My Mind — written by Harry Vanda and George Young, performed by Noogie
- Anything You Want — written by Jeffrey Cardoni and Patrick Houlihan, performed by Skycopter 9
- Numb In Both Lips — written by Austin Reynolds, Jim Sumner and Dave Jay, performed by Soul Hooligan
- Tapwater — written by Rob Basile, Brett Kane, Levon Sultanian, Jason Radford and Christian Hernandez, performed by Onesidezero
- If You Believe — written by Guy Roche and Shelly Peiken, performed by Rachael Lampa
- No Mercy — written by David Foster, Brian J. Grillo, Michael Hateley and Derek O'Brien, performed by Extra Fancy
- No One — written by Terry P. Baisamo, Stephen D. Hayes, Jeremy D. Marshall, Samuel Alan McCandless and Ronald Ward, Jr., performed by Cold
- Enough — written and performed by Matthew Hager
- Mother We Just Can't Get Enough — written by Gregg Alexander, performed by the New Radicals
- Only Hope — written by Jonathan Mark Foreman, performed by Mandy Moore
- Get Ur Freak On — written by Missy Elliott and Tim Mosley, performed by Missy Elliott
- Flood — written by Daniel Paul Haseltine, Charles Daniel Lowell, Stephen Daniel Mason and Matthew Thomas Odmark, performed by Jars of Clay
- Dancin' In the Moonlight — written by Sherman Kelly, performed by Toploader
- Someday We'll Know — written by Gregg Alexander, Danielle A. Brisebois and Debra Holland, performed by Mandy Moore and Jonathan Foreman
- Learning to Breathe — written by Jonathan Mark Foreman, performed by Switchfoot
- All Mixed Up — written by Nicholas Lofton Hexum and Douglas Vincent Martinez, performed by 311
- Dare You To Move — written by Jonathan Mark Foreman, performed by Switchfoot
- You — written by Jonathan Mark Foreman, performed by Switchfoot
- It's Gonna Be Love — written by Anthony Michael Bruno and Thomas V. Byrnes, performed by Mandy Moore
- Only Hope — written by Jonathan Mark Foreman, performed by Switchfoot
- Cry — written by J. Renald, performed by Mandy Moore
Comparisons to novel
While there are many similarities to the novel by
Nicholas Sparks, many changes were made. On his personal website, Sparks explains the decisions behind the differences. For example, he and the producer decided to update the setting from the 1950s to the 1990s, worrying that a movie set in the 50s would fail to draw teens. "To interest them," he writes, "we had to make the story more contemporary." To make the update believable, Landon's pranks and behavior are worse than they are in the novel; as Sparks notes, "the things that teen boys did in the 1950s to be considered a little 'rough' are different than what teen boys in the 1990s do to be considered 'rough.'"
Sparks and the producer also changed the play in which Landon and Jamie appear. In the novel, Hegbert wrote a Christmas play that illustrated how he once struggled as a father. However, due to time constraints, the sub-plot showing how he overcame his struggles could not be included in the movie. Sparks was concerned that "people who hadn't read the book would question whether Hegbert was a good father", adding that "because he is a good father and we didn't want that question to linger, we changed the play."
A significant difference is that at the end of the novel, unlike the movie, it is ambiguous whether Jamie died even though during the 1950s cancer meant death. Sparks says that he had written the book knowing she would die, yet had "grown to love Jamie Sullivan", and so opted for "the solution that best described the exact feeling I had with regard to my sister at that point: namely, that I hoped she would live."
