Nick and Norah's Infinite Playlist (the film)

Sollett, P. (Director). (2008). Nick and Norah’s infinite playlist [Motion picture]. United States: Depth of Field, Mandate Pictures.

Why watch this film

Even cool, privileged teenagers who hang out in Manhattan on Saturday nights face tough decisions about who’s a good match when it comes to emotional intimacy.

Plot summary

Nick is a high school senior from New Jersey who (1) is trying to get over being dumped by Tris, and (2) drives over to Manhattan in his battered yellow Yugo to play bass in a club on the Lower East Side with his queer rock band. Norah is a high school senior from a different part of New Jersey who (1) is the daughter of a music company executive and (2) hates Tris, her classmate in a fancy girls school. After Nick’s set, Norah asks him to be her boyfriend for five minutes to show Tris that she’s got a new hook-up. Norah doesn’t know that Nick is the guy Tris is dumping, but she knows Nick has compiled some great music playlists for Tris.

Thus begins a Saturday night romp in Manhattan with a group of New Jersey teens looking for an underground performance by the legendary (in their minds) band Where’s Fluffy. Nick and Norah, Tris, Nick’s queer band mates, Norah’s drunken friend Caroline, and Norah’s three-year-relationship dilemma Tal merge and break apart at various Manhattan locations as Nick and Norah try to figure out if their new possibilities (each other) are a better bet than their old ruts (Tris and Tal).

Critical evaluation

The film is based on the young-adult novel of the same name by Rachel Cohn and David Levithan. The action in the film varies substantially from that in the novel. In the film, it’s Norah who asks Nick to be the five-minute hook-up instead of the other way around, and the supporting characters stay on the scene in Manhattan rather than heading back home to New Jersey. The film adds a Brooklyn segment, and the intimate scene between Nick and Norah occurs in Norah’s father’s recording studio instead of the Hyatt in Times Square. All these changes better serve the film’s development of the theme from the novel: How do you move on when a relationship isn’t working anymore? The heart of the two presentations is the same, and the filmmakers were clever enough to realize that the novel's plotting could use a little tweaking to work better as a film.

The teen characters in the film came off as teens more clearly to me than the teen characters in the novel. Both the casting and acting in the film are great. The teen characters looked like teenagers, they moved liked teenagers, and they showed the emotional vulnerability of teenagers in ways that I didn’t see in the novel, where I was relying on a written narrative that showed more sophistication than uncertainty in the characters. Only Tris is shortchanged in the film. In the novel, her strengths eventually emerge in ways that make it clear why she dumped Nick, but in the film her character is simply self-indulgent. Needless to say, the “infinite playlist” works better in the film than in the novel, too.

The New York Times review characterizes the film well, observing that “… the story courts triviality in the pursuit of charm,” but also acknowledging that this is, after all, a film about teenagers, and “There will be plenty of time for the blues later on” (Scott, 2008).

About the director

Peter Sollett was born in 1976 in New York City. He was the writer, producer, and director of Raising Victor Vargas (2002), a well-reviewed coming-of-age story set in the Puerto Rican community in New York (Peter Sollett, n.d.).

Genre: Film, Romance

Curriculum ties

In an English class the film could be compared with the novel to explore the differences between novelistic and cinematic forms of expression. Because both develop the same theme in the same setting with the same characters, they provide a great opportunity to explore how a written narrative and a cinematic narrative use different devices to express the same ideas.

Film-talking ideas

• Show scenes which illustrate the flavor of the film without revealing too much of the plot. For example, the scene early in the film with Norah and Tris at their school lockers introduces their personalities and their rivalry, and the scene in the club where Norah asks Nick to be her five-minute boyfriend is likely to engage the interest of potential viewers.

Reading level/interest age

The film is rated PG-13. Because the teenage characters really seem like teenagers, despite their comfort being out on the streets of New York all night, I think both middle school and high schools students would find the film engaging.

Challenge issues

Again, the film is rated PG-13, which suggests minimal challenges, but the concept of teenagers out drinking and driving around Manhattan in the middle of the night is not a message all parents want teenager children to embrace.

Responses

• Remind the challenger of the policy (in the case of the San Francisco Public Library) to present “all points of view on current and historical issues. Materials should not be proscribed or removed because of partisan or doctrinal disapproval.”

• Note that the lead characters, Nick and Norah, do not drink. They are surprised to find that out about each other.

Why I chose to watch this film

I wanted to see how the film compared with the novel to understand what kind of experience young adults would have if they consumed one rather than the other. I was impressed that the story varied significantly between the two, but in ways that suit the ability of the two media to develop the same theme.

References

Peter Sollett. (n.d.). The Internet Movie Database. Retrieved November 13, 209, from http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0813164/

Scott, A. O. (2008, October 3). For muddled youth, music to live by. The New York Times. Retrieved November 13, 2009, from http://movies.nytimes.com/2008/10/03/movies/03play.html?scp=1&sq=nick%20and%20norah%27s%20infinite%20playlist&st=cse