Seasoned fans of romantic drama The Notebook have been left seething after Netflix UK opted to cut its highly emotive ending.
A night in with Ryan Gosling and Rachel McAdams, whose captivating love story unfolds over six decades in the 2004 film, was effectively ruined by what many fans perceived as the streaming service’s unnecessary decision to cut the film a scene early.
The non-linear story follows Noah and Allie, two people from vastly different social and economic backgrounds, after they meet and fall in love in the 1940s, only for life – and the backdrop of World War II – to send their lives hurtling in opposite directions.
Narrated in the present day by nursing home patient Duke to a female friend, it soon becomes apparent that the old man is in fact Noah, his female friend is Allie and he is recounting their life together because she is stricken with dementia and unable to remember her youth.
For those already well versed with director Nick Cassavetes’ adaptation of the bestselling book by Nicholas Sparks, it meant they were deprived of watching the couple die in one another’s arms after Allie remembers her devoted husband.
Instead, the highly emotional ending was axed and replaced with an earlier scene in which Duke promises to return and complete his story the following day, along with the rather less satisfying shot of birds flying over a lake.