A Walk to Remember is definitely one of the more popular romance dramas of the modern era, with the 2002 coming-of-age story retelling the eponymous Nicholas Sparks novel. It focused on Landon (Shane West) falling in love with Jamie (Mandy Moore), eventually struggling due to her dying of leukemia. It was quite tragic seeing him become a better man but failing to accept the inevitable.
It crafted many tear-jerking scenes, and to this day, A Walk to Remember stands with other pillars in the genre, including Titanic, Twilight and other Sparks adaptations such as The Notebook. However, while this film played on an age-old trope, 2011’s Restless actually told this story in a much better way for one haunting reason.
While A Walk to Remember has its merits, it felt cliched and formulaic with its “love is blind” approach. It was a sentimental story of the boy learning to cherish every moment by spending so much time with his soulmate, but admittedly, it still came off quite predictable.
In contrast, Restless mapped out the same tale but with a twist. Enoch (Henry Hopper) was the boy, in this case, who already couldn’t cope with death long before he met Annie (Mia Wasikowska). His parents died in a crash and he was comatose for a month, so as he stayed with his aunt, Mabel, he began crashing funerals to playfully understand grief. He then met Annie, a teen seemingly doing the same thing, and they fell in love. However, the bombshell was that she had three months left to live, which inspired Enoch to follow the same path Landon did.
But unlike A Walk to Remember, their journey was supernatural because Enoch had a ghost for a friend: Hiroshi. He was a kamikaze soldier who died in the Pearl Harbor battle, fighting for the Japanese, but Restless made it feel like Enoch was imagining him due to his trauma and love of the independent arts. When Enoch lashed out at Annie and the world, Hiroshi would comfort him, but it felt like make-believe. That is, until the finale when Hiroshi lost his military suit and showed up at Annie’s.
This confirmed he was indeed a ghost, walking the Earth because he couldn’t rest. He felt guilty for never telling his beloved back home — his childhood crush — what she meant to him. Thus, he died lonely. Hiroshi lost his sense of purpose that day, ergo why he roamed, unable to move into the afterlife until he regained meaning. This came through Annie, with the soldier dressing up in a fancy suit and hat. He wanted to make her entry into the afterlife as comfortable as possible, made even better by the thought that he was now worthy of reuniting with his soulmate.
This was an endearing moment that left Annie smiling and put her at ease for her quiet passing. Enoch also realized his love wasn’t wasted, and it’d live on, especially knowing Hiroshi was going to take care of Annie. It added a magical twist to their romance, and when they departed, Enoch reading Hiroshi’s love letter he never sent inspired him to never take the present for granted. Ultimately, Enoch learned about true love through Annie, but thanks to Hiroshi, he understood that he needed to open his heart and extend that trust to everyone else, especially his aunt, if he wanted to have the tomorrow Annie dreamed of for him.
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