Le grand cahier

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...

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

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.

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.