ISLAMABAD, Pakistan: National Institute of Folk and Traditional Heritage (Lok Virsa) Mandwa Film Club would resume weekly film screening on Saturday.
After one month break, the Mandwa Film Club will screen a movie “The Notebook” at its Media Center in Islamabad to entertain the visitors of Lok Virsa.
The film was directed by Janos Szasz. It is based on a widely admired novel, written in French, by the Hungarian-born writer Agota Kristof.
The book, which has been previously adapted for the stage, and which counts among its fans the Slovenian philosopher Slavoj Zizek, is a flinty parable of brutality and resilience, in which two nameless twins wait out the Second World War at their wicked-witch-like grandma’s house in rural Hungary.
The film is mostly faithful to the details and mood of the book but it is also muddled and sensationalistic and superficially shocking rather than profoundly provocative.
Janos Szasz uses ear-stabbing, slasher-film music and off-kilter camera angles to heighten the terror and disorientation but the most unnerving effect in “The Notebook” may be the twins themselves, played by actual siblings, Laszlo and Andras Gyemant.
