Not at all a romantic film starring Ryan Gosling, The Notebook is something far uglier. Based on a novel by Hungarian author Agota Kristof, it’s
the tale of twin boys who, in the final days of World War II, decide to train themselves to withstand the cruelty of adults and the harshness of desperate
times. Throughout, there’s something vague being said about the moral tolls of war and genocide, but the moral is muddled—mostly, the film just ends up as
an odd, engaging, somewhat questionable folktale about creepy twins.
András and László Gyémánt play the nameless brothers (nobody, in fact, has a name here), who’re sent to live in the Hungarian countryside with their
alcoholic battle-ax of a grandmother. (Luckily, even without names, you can tell the twins apart, because one is a slightly worse actor.) Rather than an
emotional development…