La Votos de Amor

This is one of those movies where you expect to have some central message, and at the end you get none

It is just pointless evil where good is bad, bad is good, and at the end you just dont care anymore

All, wrapped up with the most terrible editing I've ever seen, when one scene leads to another too fast, too messy, too crappy

This is a story about a place most people might not be able to conceive. It gives a picture of a backwards society that diminishes reality, where culminating incidents brought by suffered individuals show the truth. Twin siblings enduring the harshness of WWII in a village on the Hungarian border hedge their survival on studying and learning from the evil surrounding them. The characters in this film have a lot of depth and the realism with which they are portrayed by the actors is shocking at times. There is a real duality to all the characters. Unfairly dismissed by some as confusing, I have made the decision to award this film a rating of 7/10.

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.

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...

jkbonner1 has written an excellent and in-depth review of the movie, all I would like to add is that this is the first and only movie that I have ever seen that I think succeeds in realistically portraying the devastating human aspects of WWII on a personal level without resorting to sentimentalism or nostalgia. Although gruesome with plenty of disturbing scenes, it is not grotesque. For me the only movie that comes close would be Apocalypse Now - which is, of course, a very different movie but I think similar in that both give a glimpse of the inhumanity and insanity of war. I also really admired about the movie that every key character undergoes a complete transformation - it presents us with an initial situation where it seems obvious who is in the right and who is "evil", and succeeds in turning everything upside down by the end of the movie, including our own definitions of right and wrong and good and evil. The movie does of course have some inconsistencies, some scenes appear highly unlikely and the boys seem to meet with every misfortune imaginable. But I think such criticism is beside the point. Through the eyes of the boys we are shown events that did happen over and over again to thousands of people. And in the end it is up to us to consider what is "good", whether we have a right to judge any of the characters in the movie, and given such circumstances how much of our own humanity and values could any of use have maintained? BTW I signed up to IMDb just to be able to share these thoughts with you about this movie :-) and I "look forward to" one day reading the book the movie is based upon (Agota Kristof: Le grand cahier).