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•• Foreign Film Edition ••
A NAGY FÜZET (THE NOTEBOOK)
[2013, HUNGARY - Hungarian]

Budapest-born director János Szász won Special Mention at both the Chicago and Haifa International Film Festivals in 2013 for his WWII-drama THE NOTEBOOK, which was also selected as the Hungarian entry for the Best Foreign Language Film at the 86th Academy Awards. Adapted from the celebrated 1986 novel Le Grand Cahier by Ágota Kristóf, the first in a trilogy which won her the European prize for French literature, The Notebook tells a haunting tale of the perils of wartime and the disintegration of innocence into ruthless impassivity and human induration.

Lászlo and András Gyémánt play a pair of thirteen year-old twins, jolted from the cradling of their parents' storge into a mélange of brutality, when their mother (Gyöngyvér Bognár) one day decides to take them to the dirt-poor countryside to be taken care by their grandmother (Piroska Molnar), as the Nazi occupation has made the city too perilous to live in. Instantaneously the twins know hell has just begun for them as their grandmother, known to locals as "the Witch", makes no bones about her abusive and alcoholic behavior, calling them “bastards” and locking them out until they complete their laborious chores.

Left without any news about their parents from then on, they only have a few parting words from their mother, telling them to continue learning and studying no matter what, and a notebook from their father (Ulrich Matthes), asking them to record every single thing that happens to them. And so their harrowing tale is told through their entries in their notebook, taking form in scrapbook scribblings, photos and pasted objects. Szász intends to deposit audience into the crumbling world of the twins, as we follow their journey facing the brutality of mankind during wartime.

It begins with the boys merely trying to live each day by holding on to their parents’ words close at heart, to continuously learn, study and capture everything in their notebook. Equipped with only the bible to study, they end up mastering the Ten Commandments and the rest of their lessons would have to come from real life experiences. Two coddled and empty vessels stranded amidst wartime’s desperation, their logics are constantly challenged and they start to steel themselves to the brutal new world through a series of disturbing methods. They still want to learn, but their lessons rapidly morph into survival skills mastered through an array of calculated afflictions which some will prove more disturbing than shocking.

A rather competent performance by both the Gyémánt brothers, they manage to tiptoe gracefully along the borders between bravery and savage, between callous and ruthless. Hedging their survival on the “new skills” they acquire, their journey intertwines with a string of strangers all proving to be more for the purpose of provoking rather than anything purposeful. That is my slight issue with the film. You’d be surprised with the number of lecherous souls they would encounter, from a harelip neighbor (Orsolya Toth), a pedophiliac Nazi officer (Ulrich Thomsen), to a corrupted priest (Péter Andorai) and finally a pro-Nazi maid who engages the boys in a bizarre masturbation scene.

There seems to be a central key note which remains rather overlooked based on the reviews that I’ve encountered of this film. In fact, it is to me evinced at the very beginning (a calming scene of the twins sleeping head to head like a conjoined twins), throughout as an undertone (they do everything together and even finish each other’s sentences), and finally the ending. I would interpret the almost deadly connection between the brothers as the pivotal message in what Szász is trying to deliver in this 1 hour 52 minutes drama. Culminating in a seemingly abrupt ending (argued by some as incomplete and unexplained), it makes perfect sense to me as it is actually the final lesson the twins are forcing themselves to learn, in their unrelenting quest for survival.

Rating : B+

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