His name is Logan Thibault, and he was a United States marine. He found it glistening in the sun, in a 
dirt filled road that surrounded him in the darkness of war in Iraq. It saved him, she saved him. He took a few steps to reach over and pick up the picture of the woman in the dirt and within seconds, the very spot he was standing in just moments before was blown to pieces. Had it not been for the sudden interest in the photo glistening before him, he too would have been obliterated. Nicholas Sparks’ The Lucky One follows Thibault on his journey to find the woman in the picture that saved his life on more than one occasion, and to thank her in true Sparks fashion.
I first read The Lucky One while I was visiting family for a week in Puerto Rico and I remember that not even the sound of the waves, or the beautiful countryside could tear me from my kindle. I am, after all, a sucker for a good romance novel. At this point I think I was already aware that Zac Efron would be playing the lead role, so that made me all the more excited to finish the book before the movie came out in theaters when I got back to New Jersey. My biggest fear however, was that the movie wouldn’t amount to the book, which is usually the case whenever I read a book beforehand. Luckily, the visuals of the film followed the storyline particularly well. That is, aside from one scene that I felt stood out like a sore thumb; the way in which the photo was found.
In the novel, Thibault experienced a number of tribulations during his time in the Iraq war, but finding the picture of Elizabeth was not one of them. He did find her in the depths of the desert, but in the novel, he was ready to dispose of the picture just as fast as he found it. That is, until he has a change of heart. Instead, he takes the photograph with him, posts it on a wall and waits to see if someone would claim it. As the days rolled on and no one came forward, he decided to take it with him. With the picture in his pocket, Logan begins to have a string of luck at poker games and manages to survive a number of attacks including one that killed two of his closest friends. His other friend Victor had a theory; she was his good luck charm.
I had a solid image of this scene in my mind while I read this chapter. It had to do with fate, and the possibility that she may have been the light that he needed during this difficult time. In the movie however, we see things differently. At the beginning of the scene, the camera shows us Logan and a fellow marine through the window of a destroyed vehicle. Interesting enough, as an audience, it was almost as if we were watching their movements. In the next shot, we see Logan with a glare in his eye, which at first glimpse looks almost as if it was coming from something in his hands, until the camera shows a small, shiny object in the ground. I thought this effect was particularly clever because if he had just been squinting his eyes, we wouldn’t necessarily have been able to tell that this was due to any glare other than the sun. Again at this point, as he gets up to investigate the object, we are watching him, observing his steps from the battered, burnt, car door window. The camera then shifts back to Logan as he bends down, cleans the photo and sticks it into his pocket. Just seconds later, the spot where he was standing just moments ago with another marine is blown to shreds. The scene then fades and when it fades back in, through the Logan’s blurry vision, we see him in a safety area where someone returns the picture of Elizabeth that they found in his pocket.
I’ve probably seen this movie a dozen times and I don’t think I have ever noticed it from this view before. What made it even more intriguing was the fact that at this moment as an audience member I felt as if we were partaking in another role; the enemy. As the camera pans past the door we aren’t just having a different view of what the character is doing, we’re actually watching him, spying even. Just moments after we have this view of Logan through the door, the area they were all just standing at blows up, and I couldn’t help but feel that we as the audience took part in this bombing.
When you read a book, you give your imagination the capability to go wherever you take it to. In a sense, you can create your own movie in your mind and thus, you are able to make it as emotional or emotionless as you please. There is something about the way you feel when you read a book that just doesn’t compare to seeing it on screen because you become the director, the cinematographer, a 
producer even. However, there are times even in books that cannot simply be described the way that it can be visualized in film, such as the scene I have described above. I can’t think of any way the author would have been able to follow Logan but then have us watch him in the way we were able to in the film. Surely, a book is always more descriptive. We are given moments that may not have been able to fit in the film because of time restrictions and the film stock itself. A book can be as long or as short as you would like it to be, but in film there are limitations. For this reason, I believe reading the book has a slightly larger emotional impact than a film would have, for me anyway.
Ultimately, I feel that both the book and the film complimented each other as far as storytelling goes. There were subtle differences between the two, but I feel that they were able to portray, with the cinematography, the same story that they were trying to get across.
Erica M. Szkola