Le grand cahier

It's 1944. Twin boys live comfortable city lives. Their parents are worried about the impending Nazi defeat and upheaval. Their mother brings them to live with their bitter grandmother. They don't even know her who has been living alone in the Hungarian rural home estranged from her daughter. She's angry and beats on the boys. Local girl Harelip steals from them but she turns the table on the boys and they're the ones getting beaten. Nazis have a camp nearby. After constant beatings, the boys decide to toughen up and learn from the evil surrounding them.

It's a disturbing violent world being portrayed. The twins are not necessarily good actors. They don't get much sympathy. The grandmother is fascinating in her ugliness. It's a cold-hearted fable without anybody to root for.

The horror of war through the eyes of two boys. War has it's effect on every age group of people.War stories have been told several times, though this is quite different it's own way. It leaves you thinking, how devastating the war can be, and it leaves a mark on everyone through the ages to come. About this movie, the direction is superb, the acting especially the two boys are wonderful. Even the music is worth mentioning, is superb. It was screened in the Contemporary World Cinema section at the 2013 Toronto International Film Festival. The film has been selected as the Hungarian entry for the Best Foreign Language Film at the 86th Academy Awards.

Can a dysfunctional mind survive to a war? maybe for this kind of thought human does a better adaptation to a disgraceful system. The Twins here push it out his coldness showing a "natural" behavior through the movie, this is a basic instinct? war shape you to get insane. His grandmother increased that behavior, without bound and walking in an edge of life. The twins might make crazy things just for his interpretation of justice, meanwhile his book is filled with language in an innocent voice.

WWII shattered the Europeans feelings. When Humans try to reach a goal many time doesn't look sides.

The Notebook is a Hungarian film, full of criticism and allegorical situations. No neglecting to forget their effort to not take part, just a brushwork of history. Centered in twins, you can understand the miserable life in those days.

In one of the most remarkable scenes of 'The Notebook', twin 12 year old brothers methodically, coldly trade punches. Each swings at the other, and then stands still, face expressionless, as he receives a slew of punches back. Gradually the punches are harder, and eventually they start using belts to ratchet up then pain threshold. They are children but this is no game: they are toughening up, physically and psychologically, to survive the war. They have realized that cuddling together and wishing the war away will not save them, and they better be prepared for hunger, pain, betrayal and daily humiliations. And survive they do, although they decide that in order to do so they must blackmail priests, steal from corpses, bully their grandmother and plant explosives in someone's kitchen.

The director competently handles deep staging and the use of long lens, very apt for the emotional distance the story takes with regards to the acts it depicts. The film works in large part because of the performance of László Gyémánt and András Gyémánt, real life twins, who give a stupendously restrained, controlled performances, often consisting solely of intense stares and vengeful glances. Color is mostly bleached out, music is sparse and some of the best moments consist of static, unnervingly long shots.

The film is set in a small village straddling the Austro-Hungarian border during world war two. But it is not particularly interested in providing context of the war, or of Hungary's terrible plight in it, or in Nazism or in any other details of the historical setting. So don't expect to learn much about world war 2 in this film as it is merely the backdrop to a story that is really about survival and what happens to children's moral compass during war.

Hungarian films are their own sub-genre. Perhaps no other country has produced such consistently bleak films, soaked in pessimism and mostly focused on moral corruption and confusion. This small gem of a film is yet another example of this cinematic tradition. This is not quite at the level of masterpieces such as 'Come and See'or 'Time of the Drunken Horses', my two favorite films about childhood during wartime, but absolutely deserves to be seen, or, to be more precise, endured.

The Hungarian film directors are often consumed up in photography and do not care of the story. Thanks God, not here. Agota Kristof's Le Grand Cahier has such a strong storyline that it cannot be destroyed. However attempt to do so can be detected here.

I hope that after a while all directors learn that a book itself is not a script, they can use movie to tell the story, even leaving out some key elements of the book.

Some scenes cry that were shot on the same streets, same interiors.

But this is it, that's why I gave only 8/10, as the film works. It takes you to a journey where you forget your soda and popcorn and step out to the real word afterward a bit changed. You know that it can happen. As in the summary, the circumstances can bring out the evil from everyone. Even 10 year old boys. We know this since the Lord of the Flies, but it is good to be remembered to it from time to time...