From the moment you lay your eyes on the pencil-covered illustration that opens The Notebook, it sends you back in time to your school days. This film takes you through flash memories of angst-filled compulsory education via the images of daydream doodles. This Lithuanian short film features excerpts from regular school activities such as a “day of self-government” and “Tuesday we bake sausages.” It’s a reminder how, no matter what part of the world you live in, school could have been both a formative and, at the same time, an incredibly nebulous experience.
There are moments that catch you off guard and that give you a chuckle. A pommel horse in a gym turns out to be the backside of a goat; an object whose sound upon impact emulates that of a church bell toll, and turns out to be the garb of a man of the cloth-- a clever transition.
In this writer’s view, the filmmaker is successful in bringing back memories of feeling out of place while coming of age. From the perspective of a nine year old watching it, a Notebook can hide a whole different world where the way you feel about the world is the world.
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Photos courtesy of FLYING FILM FESTIVAL
