National News

ISLAMABAD, Jul 7 (APP): National Institute of Folk and
Traditional Heritage (Lok Virsa) Mandwa Film Club would
resume weekly film screening here on Saturday.
After one month break, the Mandwa Film Club will screen a
movie “The Notebook” here at its Media center 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.