Because the movie is about children experiences in WW2, I compare it to French movies with a similar plot and I can tell without doubt that this is perhaps the most terrifying of all. I think that the rough unexpected ending is not justified by the events preceding it. The boys do train themselves to withstand hardship--this is a very interesting point in the movie--but there is no justification to the way they treat their father. They cannot blame him for their hardship, except perhaps the fact that he returns from the war as a broken person, hardly compared to the attentive and loving father he was before he was recruited. I think the movie is outstanding in many aspects. There is no good person and bad person in their life during the war, but that's no reason for their last action. Their separation is also hard to understand. All in all however, it is a masterpiece and deserves to be widely seen.
Review of The Notebook
