The Notebook (A Nagy Füzet)

THE NOTEBOOK (A Nagy Füzet)                 B-                   

aka:  Le Grand Cahier

Hungary  Austria  France  Germany  (110 mi)  2013  ‘Scope  d:  János Szász

János Szász studied drama and stage direction at the Academy of Theater and Film Arts, and spent four years at the National Theater of Budapest before embarking on a career as a film director, where his second film WOYZECK (1994), which won five major awards at the Hungarian Film Week in Budapest, was the first to be released internationally.  Followed by THE WITMAN BOYS (1997), Szász developed a reputation for brilliant cinematography and music, excellent acting, and ultra-bleak subject matter, often set within a historical context.  While this film took the top prize at the Karlovy Vary film festival, an atmospheric World War II thriller about two twin boys sent to the Hungarian countryside to wait out the war under the supposed safety of their cruel and embittered grandmother, it never rises to the level of his earlier works.  The film is based on the debut novel, Le Grand Cahier, (1986), the first book of a “trilogy of twins” from Hungarian émigré author Agota Kristóf, who left Hungary at the age of 21 and settled in Switzerland where she began writing in French.  Translated into 30 different languages, the book caused something of a literary scandal in France, known as the Abbeville case, where a complaint was made by parents against a high school teacher in 2000 for recommending insensitive and “pornographic” literature to his students, where the Minister of Education intervened with a letter of support, as the book was taught in many schools and is considered a classic of contemporary literature.

The 13-year old twins offer a unique vantage point of the war, as families are often divided and shattered by war and death, but these two remain inseparable, speaking with one voice, becoming an almost mythical force of unity and brotherly love.  Set in a farmhouse near an unnamed border village, the Nazi’s already occupy the surrounding region, where the military commandant (Ulrich Thomsen) takes a surprising interest in the twins, almost like a fetish, where they become his favorite pets.  Known only as one and the other, András and László Gyémánt, their grandmother (Piroska Molnár), who the townspeople call “The Witch,” has her own pet name for them, calling them “little bastards” throughout the entire film, often thinking they are up to no good, city kids that know nothing about hard work.  Initially they sit and watch her perform all the chores herself, a large and obese woman, never offering to help, so she doesn’t feed them at night, claiming you have to earn your keep around a farm.  Soon she has them doing nearly all the chores while she sits in a rocking chair and smokes, taking evening sips from a bottle of local brew, where she caresses her hidden jewelry while continually cursing the loathsome memory of her dead husband, wishing he had never been born. 

Reading entries made into their diary, exactly as they were instructed to do by their father in the opening scenes, everything in it is objective and scientifically precise, showing no feelings whatsoever, where the extensive use of voiceovers comment upon the many graphic horrors that take place offscreen, occasionally resorting to animated imagery, but the narration is always told in a cold and dispassionate manner, which has a way of distancing everything the viewer sees onscreen.  While this effect is intentional, avoiding any hint of emotional attachment or sentimentality, it also alienates the audience, preventing any personal identification with any of the characters, and most especially the twins themselves.  But they go on studying, where the only book they possess is The Bible, often reading from it at night.  Driven by the open hostility of the grandmother, a raging inferno of bitterness and hate, she inflicts every kind of punishment on the twins, insults, beatings, hunger, and cold, but they learn to stand up to her by refusing to cry and withstanding any pain, by asking she beat them some more, as they pride themselves on enduring every inflicted misery.  In doing so, they become hardened and embittered creatures themselves, busily preparing themselves for a Darwinian survival, much like the wandering kids in Osterman’s Wolfschildren (Wolfskinder) (2013).  While there are only a few other villagers of note, including a kindly Jewish cobbler (János Derzsi) murdered before being sent off to the death camps, a tomboyish thief known as harelip (Orsolya Tóth), also a corrupt church Deacon (Péter Andorai) and his sex-starved maid (Diána Kiss), nearly all are dead by the end of the film.  Directed with a grim precision, evoking a bleakness within that matches the utter devastation surrounding them, what’s peculiarly interesting is the degree of defiance displayed by the twins, eliminating weakness from their vocabulary even as they are being brutalized, becoming a chilling portrait of two creepy and fascinating souls warped by a crushing onslaught of inconceivable trauma.

Flower Buds (Poupata)

FLOWER BUDS (Poupata)           B+            

Czech Republic  (91 mi)  2011  d:  Zdenĕk Juráský

The short 3-word take on this film, according to a friend Kirk, is “snow, trains, bleak,” and indeed this post-Communist glimpse of life in the Czech Republic couldn’t be more gloomy and miserable, where the oppressive, anti-humanist feel is overwhelming, reminiscent of the János Szász Hungarian film WOYZECK (1994), an excellent film adaptation of the brilliant German playwright Georg Büchner’s 19th century play, a working man’s tragedy where in both films humans can find no salvation under social institutions or oppressive regimes, much of it set in the decaying remnants of an isolated, broken down train post where Jarda, Vladimír Javorský, works as a railway signalman, spending most of his time carefully building ships inside a bottle while splurging his earnings boozing and gambling every night, where he’s addicted to the slot machines in a local bar.  His wife Kamila, Malgorzata Pikus, is a railway cleaning lady, where they have two teenage children, Agáta, Marika Soposká, who is inseparable from her best friend Magda, Natalie Rehorova, and Honza, Miroslav Pánek, who hangs with a group of pot-smoking slackers.  There isn’t an unpretentious note anywhere in this film, but it has the unyielding bleakness of East European miserablism, set mostly in the constant winter snow, beautifully shot on film by Vladimír Smutný, much of it in crowded bar interiors, claustrophobic living rooms, or the dark of night.  No one in this film is spared, as all are up to their necks in trouble, where misfortune is the prevalent sign of the times, where early on we see one of Honza’s friends nearly freeze to death in a drunken stupor, permanently losing the loss of his legs. 

Agáta is pregnant, but refuses to tell anyone, waiting for the right opportunity to spring it on the most unsuspecting, hoping that could be her ticket out of town, even if it means betraying some of her friends, while Honza’s buddies overindulge in drink, spending their time getting wasted, where he and a friend Cryil grow cannabis plants in the basement, where neither child works, has a cent to their name, or has any illusions about the future.  Kamila seems to have a secret yearning for her lost youth, as she and a large gathering of the town’s women put out a naked calendar to raise money for the 25th anniversary of the state-sponsored Spartakiada festival, a song and movement routine that reflects physical fitness, even though these are mostly older, out of shape, middle-aged women.  She befriends a Vietnamese couple selling food out of a truck on the street, where the wife joins in the dance training.  In stark contrast, the local bar hires a weekly stripper, Zuzana (Aneta Krejcíková), who takes it all off in a raucous interplay with the drunken customers, where Honza immediately falls madly in love, driven by the purest intentions of noble youth, which she finds amusing, but also green around the collar.  Honza persists, holding nothing back, literally losing his right mind, discovering the only way to save her is to buy her outright from her pimp, like stolen merchandise on the black market.  Jarda, meanwhile, becomes so uncontrollably over his head in debt, selling the deed to his home where his family will be evicted come spring. 

When Jarda loses his job for missing work, he goes in a homeless tailspin, literally missing for days on end, riding trains day and night, where his family hasn’t a clue where he is, even as the Christmas holiday approaches.  The film is a series of interconnecting vignettes, each one filled with tragedies more dour than the next, but some are absurdly hilarious, where Honza literally buys Zuzana and brings her home to live with the family, while Agáta has announced her pregnancy, trying to pin it on one guy after another, but none fall for it, where family dysfunction reigns supreme, but the underlying tenderness expressed at Christmas is remarkably moving, making this a memorable holiday movie unlike any other you will likely experience.  The harshness of the world around them is inescapable, like any Béla Tarr film, or like a world of lost hopes.  The finale is a true pleasure, almost completely shot in darkness, where looming in the town’s background are industrial smokestacks spewing toxic smoke.  One of the real pleasures of this film is it screens on actual film, the only one out of 13 films seen so far at the Chicago Film Festival.  The film won 4 awards out of 10 nominations at the Czech Academy Awards, including Best Film, Best Director, Best Cinematography, and Best Actor (Vladimír Javorský) in the director’s first feature film effort.  In much the same vein as fellow Finnish miserablist Aki Kaurismäki, Juráský gets terrific performances overall and does an excellent job balancing bleak amusement with the hauntingly oppressive, dire economic circumstances.