Screening of ‘The Notebook’ today

Islamabad

Director: Janos Szasz

Mandwa Film Club of Lok Virsa has selected 2013 European co production ‘The Notebook’ for screening today (Saturday, at 6 p.m.

Hungary has made several distinguished films on World War-II. This is largely because Hungary is gone through the brutality of war and how everything was destroyed in bits and pieces. Even after 70 years today, the wounds and the memories still bleed. Books are being written to recall the horrors of war.

Based on the bestselling novel of Agota Kristof, ‘The Notebook’ begins when the World War is about to end. We are still at war. A mother takes her 13 year old twin sons from the city to countryside to her alcoholic, mean, selfish and abusive mother for protection, if not for better life.

The boys want to stay with the mother and the scene where the mother leaves and the two boys run after her is touching. The mother has left the children for protection. The irony begins when children are not protected but tortured and punished by the grandmother, known in the village as the witch for her friendly behaviour and courtesy. The boys must learn to live on their own. We get to see the powerful and honest insight into the world where people kill each other and those who survive (the two brothers) must learn from the evil around them.

Germany has occupied Hungary and the war is all around the country.  The boys are never allowed to enjoy their childhood by the old lady who hardly allows them the comfort inside her rundown house. The boys learn to live on their own, facing not only the harsh weather (and still harsher grandmother) but also hunger and cruelty. They begin to reject the moral code and learn from the cruel world. All what they see and feel is jolted down in a notebook. The war shapes them into what they become and what they become is now in the notebook. In this disgraceful world, the basic instinct is the only thing left behind.

The Notebook won several international awards and was official nomination from Hungary for Best Foreign Film Academy Award (Oscar). Critics have appreciated the grotesque presentation of horrors seen through eyes of childhood innocence where the grandmother would make sure that boys go through hell at home. The device of writing hardships in the notebook would have been more suitable for a novel than film.

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