Customer Reviews

Fateless

5 star:		(19)
4 star:		(7)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Watching a film depicting the dehumanizing harshness and brutality of a concentration camp, viewers likely do not expect to find beauty. I have watched this film twice now, and it is its beauty, not its grim, often bleak story line, that seems to have made its first...and lasting...impression on me.

The director and cinematographer chose to film Fateless not in black and white, as Schindler's List was done, but in almost colorless tones washed over with sepia and grey, which give the film the appearance of very early photography, the kind your grandparents and great grandparents might have appeared in. And, just when you think you're watching a black and white film, small hints of real color appear, almost the way real colors sometimes show briefly in departing dreams. The film is an impeccably crafted work of visual art, and it is its imagery that most moved me.

There are three moments of unexpected beauty that for me were most memorable. The first is a sequence showing prisoners forced to stand at attention, knowing that should they fall they will be punished or put to death. Dressed in their striped uniforms and standing in lines, as the impact of the fear drains their weakened bodies, they begin to shake and to sway. And, the movement is accompanied by the mournful singing of what could be a hymn, richly done by a single female voice. As the camera pans over them, it is almost as though they are one with the music, and the effect is gut-wrenching.

The second is a sequence in which the boy makes his way through a downpour in the mud toward a goal which remains ambiguous. As he slips and slides and falls, silhoutted against the falling rain, we no longer see the child he was but simply a human being reduced to the barest of necessities, the need to fight to remain alive. Filmed in black and grey, it is among the film's most powerful symbolic moments.

And, finally, a scene in which the barely living boy is laid out among corpses on the threshold of his own death. As he lies there, we see what he sees: a sky filled with flowing clouds that intermittently allow weak rays of sunlight to filter through them. It is a deeply personal, yet universal statement: the few seconds of time most of us will have as we look at our living world for the last time. Almost incongruously, the moment becomes the beginning of his salvation.

I am sure other viewers of Fateless will take from it parts of the film that they will treasure. These three were among mine. I intend to watch this film many more times. It is a beautifully rendered work of art.

I recall reading Victor Frankl's MAN'S SEARCH FOR MEANING in college. If I'm not mistaken, I believe I read it for a number of different courses. It seemed to be required in history classes, philosophy and theology classes, and even an introductory class in psychology. Frankl's belief that the human spirit can triumph over the most overwhelming odds is a modern classic. As I watched FATELESS, I was reminded of this book, especially when an older prisoner took an interest in the young Gyorgy Koves (played by Marcell Nagy), the film's main character. Yet while the triumph of the human spirit over adversity can be found in this film, it's hardly a feel good flick. If anything, it's one of those films that will haunt and challenge viewers long after watching it.

The film itself is based on Irme Kertesz's novel which tells the story of a community of Hungarian Jews near the end of World War II. In scenes that would be familiar to those who have read Elie Wiesel's NIGHT, the Jews of Budapest believed they'd be spared, or at least would not face the horrors that those who went to the camps earlier had to endure. Many discovered that this was hardly the case as people from Budapest began to be deported. We see the horrors of the camps as one would expect from such a film. We see the ways in which many prisoners took advantage of the situation while others tried to do their best to make sure as many people as possible survived. The camp is finally liberated and against the advice of the American liberators, Gyorgy returns home and it is then that we see how much the war and suffering changed this once effervescent young teen into someone who knew the truth about life.

There are a number of reasons this film has such power. It has a strong story, it is filmed in a way that is appropriate for what is taking place, and a moving musical score by composer Ennio Morricone. While all these strengths make for a wonderful film, the point of view is perhaps the strongest element. We always see the action through the eyes of the young Gyorgy, and Marcell Nagy is such a gifted young actor, we feel as if we're moving through the film with him.

FATELESS was not widely screened which is unfortunate. People missed the opportunity to see a powerful film on a wide screen where it has its full impact. Its release on DVD will ensure that many others will see it, and no doubt it will be counted among the most compelling accounts of the Holocaust in cinema.

'Sorstalansag' (FATELESS) is an inordinately powerful, quiet journey through a year in Nazi Concentration Camps at Auschwitz, Buchenwald, and Zeitz. Adapted by Imre Kertesz from his first novel, the story is semi-autobiographical as Kertesz spent a year of his youth in Auschwitz as a Hungarian Jew. Though Kertesz alters his novel of the life of one Gyorgy Koves, in a manner he carefully explains in one of the featurettes accompanying this DVD, the observational skills and tenor of his literate mind suffuse this surprisingly quiet depiction of life in a death camp.

We first meet Gyorgy Koves as a curly headed handsome 14-year old youth in 1944 bidding farewell to his beloved father as he departs for a labor camp. Wearing the yellow star of David proudly, Gyorgy has little understanding of what it is to be a Jew, a lesson he will learn in the coming year and affect his perception of the world and his place in it. Gyorgy's mother left his father and his father has remarried and requests that Gyorgy stay with his stepmother while he is away 'for a while' in the labor camp. Gyorgy is conflicted as he loves his mother but he does as his father requests. Almost inadvertently Gyorgy and his friends are taken off a bus and separated by the Nazis into trains bound for concentration camps. Gyorgy remains relatively naive about what is happening: his head is shaved, his worldly goods are absconded, and he begins the hellish life of survival in Auschwitz. Where Kertesz writes differently than other authors who have described Holocaust conditions is in his mindset of Gyorgy: Gyorgy strives to retain a sense of equilibrium in this bizarre new life, seeing certain events as probable errors, mistakes, or simply 'the way things are'. He endures starvation, brutal work, pain from an injured and infected knee, boredom, and observing sights of torture of his fellow prisoners. Though he is walking in a stunned world, he is still able to fine the little moments of 'happiness' because of his youthful outlook and creative mind. He gradually grows to understand what being a Jew means, and while he is unable to fathom all he sees in captivity, he learns that if he can't understand life in a concentration camp, how can he understand life outside either. Gyorgy is literally on the carts moving toward the crematorium when the Allies free the camp. He meets an American (Daniel Craig) who suggests he not return to Budapest, but go to America instead where he can pursue a new existence. Yet Gyorgy's devotion to family, to country, and to being a Jew returns him to Budapest where he finds a destroyed city that had been home and wanders the town square trying to make sense of it all.

As Gyorgy Koves, Marcell Nagy gives a stunning performance, a picture of a child/man who is forced to enter the world of adulthood via the horrors of Auschwitz. Nagy captures the essence of the character with minimal dialogue and maximum use of his body language and eyes. The supporting cast is superb, each creating vignettes in the few moments we see them that burn into our memory. The cinematography by Gyula Pados uses subdued color for the scenes outside the camps and a subtle sepia toned black and white or the scenes within the walls of the terrifyingly real buildings and yards of the camps. The musical score by Ennio Morricone sustains the mood throughout. But it is the director Lajos Koltai whose impeccable sensitivity to Kertesz' writing and vision that makes this long (140 minutes) film a seamless pondering of the passage of time - minute by minute, hour by hour, day by day, etc - that is the essence of Gyorgy's survival of a nightmare 'with little moments of happiness wherever they may happen'. This is a magnificent film, by a gifted crew, and though it contains visuals that will crush your heart, it must be seen to be believed. In Hungarian and German and English with subtitles. Highly Recommended. Grady Harp, June 06

"Even beside the chimneys in the pause between the torments there was something similar to happiness."

"Sorstalansag" ("Fateless") is a different sort of film about the Holocaust. It is based on the controversial novel by Imre Kertesz, a Jewish-Hungarian author and concentration camp survivor who won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 2002 "for writing that upholds the fragile experience of the individual against the barbaric arbitrariness of history." "Sorstalansag" is Kertesz's best known book, and while the author has played down that the novel was autobiographical or quasi-autobiographical (Kertesz spent a year in Auschwitz whereas the central character of his book moves from camp to camp), apparently when he wrote the screenplay for this 2005 Hungarian film, he worked in more of his own experiences from the camps.

Gyorgy Koves (Marcell Nagy) is fourteen years old and living with his well to do Jewish family in Budapest when he is put on a bus and ends up with other kids in a camp. Somebody tells them to tell the Germans they are sixteen, because anybody younger is sent immediately to the gas chamber. This is the first time that somebody does something that will help keep Gyorgy alive as he goes from camp to camp. What is controversial about the story is the idea that Gyorgy finds not "happiness," but what Kertesz describes as "something similar to happiness." The relativity of the term is important, because this is a world where it is a good thing when the kid sharing your bunk dies and you get their food for a day or two before the guards discover you are sleeping next to a corpse.

Director Lajos Koltai is a cinematographer who was nominated for an Oscar for "Malena," but he lets Gyula Pados ("Kontroll") shoot this picture and together they come up with something interesting visually. "Sorstalansag" begins in color, but when we get to the camps the color is bled away so that it is black and white with tints of blue. The film because almost poetic in its depiction of what happens, showing the piles of clothing by the empty box cars, the lines of prisoners forced to stand in straight lines throughout the night, or watching Gyorgy and other prisoner chase each other around in the mud. Time and time again a scene ends before you expect to, and we recognize a sense of how the greatest horrors are around the corner. It is not seeing escaped prisoners hung that the film privileges as horror, but a starving Gyorgy watching a corpulent German solider stuffing his face.

For me the idea that a young boy would focus on what made him happy amidst the horrors of the camps is not farfetched. Gyorgy is never going to forget, and if he chooses to remember the best moments rather than the worst, I am certainly not in a position to criticize him. The point where I started questioning the narrative is when we get to a moment that first surprised me in "Schindler's List," where we learn the shocking fact that there were actually showers in Auschwitz, and not just gas chambers dressed up as showers. There were several points where I thought Gyorgy was dead, one after another, even though I expected him to survive the camps, so that challenged by credulity. But then there was something that reminded me of Kertesz's agenda. One minute it is the middle of the night and the Germans are ordering the crematoriums shut down. The next it is the day and the camp has been liberated and there are American soldiers all over the place. The moment of liberation is not part of the equation. Nor, when Gyorgy returns to Budapest the moment of reconciliation with his mother. Instead it is when he is questioned by a man on the trolley that Kertesz sets up the benediction of his film:

"People only ask about the horrors. Whereas I should talk about the happiness of the camps next time. If they ask. If they ask at all. And if I don't forget myself."

Most stories dealing with the horrors of World War 2, do so mainly from the point of view of adults. Two of the greatest films to deal with this subject in recent years are Spielberg's "Schindler's List" and Polanski's "The Pianist". But what makes "Fateless" different, is it is told from the eyes of a child. We tend to forget that children were also tortured during this time in history.

Young Hungarian actor Marcell Nagy (in first big screen performance) plays Gyorgy Koves, a 14 year old boy from Budapest who is sent to a concentration camp after his father (Janos Ban) is also taken away. Now the boy must try to survive the horror he is about to go through.

The film was based on Imre Kertesz's autobiographical novel, which he won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2002. And was directed by Lajos Koltai, who makes his directorial debut. Koltai though has worked as a cinematographer on another talented Hungarian filmmaker's work, Istvan Szabo. Koltai is shooting Szabo's most recent film "Rokonok" and has shot past films including "Being Julia", "Sunshine", and "Mephisto".

For a first time director Koltai displays a wonderful visual eye, which I guess shouldn't come as much of a surprise from a cinematographer. But his ability at handling his actors and creating a solid pace really impressed me. He directs with a sure hand. I hope he makes more films in the future. This is also a rather ambitious attempt for a first time director. So a lot could have gone wrong for Koltai.

"Fateless" has moments that I found very disturbing. When you sit back for a moment a really think about what you are seeing and you realize that this is all true, it can give you chills. Lots of credit must be thrown Nagy's way. He displays an impressive emotional range for such a young actor. It's probably one of the best performances I've seen all year. It's sure to be better than anything Brad Pitt or Tom Cruise will do this year.

Besides the film's strong emotional storyline, one has to notice the beautiful cinematography here by Gyula Pados, who shot "Kontroll", a Hungarian film which opened here last year. He also shot this year's "Basic Instinct 2". But I think his best work is here. He and Koltai managed to get such tender, embracive shots, that even though what we are seeing is sad, we can still appreciate the cinematography and its beauty.

Strangely though the film has yet to find an audience. This film is every bit as good as "Schindler's List" or "The Pianist" and yet people have yet to hear about it. The film wasn't even nominated at last year's Oscars for "Best Foreign Film". And I doubt this year it will get any nominations. I hope I'm wrong about this, but, I hope people aren't staying away from this film because it's Hungarian. I know that's why the Academy has avoided it. They simply do not like to award Hungarian films, but, I didn't know the public would treat it as coldly too! I seriously urge everyone, please, please, please, seek this film out. Do not pay attention to nay sayers who tell you the film doesn't do anything new, it's all been done before. These remarks lead me to believe there is a prejudice against it because it's Hungarian. Please prove me wrong. This is one of the year's best films.

Bottom-line: Lajos Koltai's directorial debut is one of the year's best films. A powerful, absorbing film that manages to touch your heart. Has many heartbreaking moments, and shows, as well as any film could, the horrors of WW2. Nagy is a born actor!

Marcell Nagy portrays the fourteen year old boy Gyorgy Koves in a very deeply emotional and haunting existential film about survival in several Nazi concentration camps. Marcell has large intelligent brown eyes that experience everything and absorb events. Marcell tells us his life story in a matter of fact distant voice, his feelings and thoughts are told in a stream of consciousness manner which makes the film even more penetrating and real to the viewer ... who experiences first hand the horrors of the worst atrocities associated with World War II.

The film begins with Marcell going about his everyday life in Budapest, the son of an upper middle class family. He is carefree and planning his future until stories filter down about the horrors of the concentration camps. Family members gather, including great Aunts and Uncles to discuss the possibilities, even making small jokes - planning but not yet realizing the full impact of such unspeakable tragedies on their lives. There is a partial denial of events until Jews are required to wear the yellow star of David on their jackets and many randomly disappear ... They are taken by train to camps in Germany. Gyorgy's father closes his shop, makes arrangements with a loyal employee to turn the business over to him with an understanding it is until the war is over. The viewer senses the hopelessness and finality when the keys are handed over. Gyorgy is put on a work detail at a factory, when he and a busload of young workers are detained at a Gendarme police station ...

Luckily, Gyorgy knew a few words of German when the prisoners were separated at the train station into groups. He over heard one line lead to a better camp and if someone was older they went on a work detail, young prisoners who could not work wree not valued. This was the first of many random happenings where the right decision led to ... life ... or death. Gyorgy's fate hung in the balance. Throughout the film, different scenes are totally unforgettable, they leave deep indelible impressions on the viewer, images are seared into the mind, branded, tattoed forever. When airplanes flew overhead, while everyone took shelter, Gyorgy was counting the number of seconds before a bomb exploded ... When Gyorgy and his friends were in the Gendarme's office, as each one met with the officer, he asked about their backgrounds and confiscated their belongings - the lack of compassion was so transparent and inhumane, the greed for a penknife was in such sharp contrast to the serious decisions made at the moment about so many lives.

There were scenes in the camp when all the prisoners are lined up in the barbed wire prison yard, wearing striped uniforms and standing in the cold and the rain as punishement and also for roll call. Scenes where rocks were being shovelled and the cruel behavior of the prison guards toward the weaker prisoners made one shudder. Scenes where Gyorgy developed an infection in his leg, an abscess which turned out to have maggots in it. Scenes where Gyorgy was starving and hungry, as a corpulent German guard ate meat and bread from his lunch box while Gyorgy chewed along as if he were tasting the meal. Gyorgy developed a friendship with a fellow prisoner who was also from Budapest. This was a very heartwarming sincere friendship as each looked out for one the other. His friend spoke with hope and love about the street where he lived and about returning in the future to his beloved apartment/home in Budapest. This one goal provided meaning to his existence in the camp ... In another heart-wrenching scene, two prisoners escaped and were hung as an exmaple to the rest.

Lastly, the rescue scene is very memorable, where a kind genorous and efficient American soldier spoke with Gyorgy about his future plans, explaining to him, he could go to America, enter college and forget about all this, put it all behind him. The soldier could not understand why Gyorgy chose to return to Budapest ... When Gyorgy arrived in Budapest, everything about life there seemed surreal even when he travelled on buses. He saw the people lived and experienced nearly normal life, a few realized he was a Holocaust survivor, some looked at him with horror, others with a guilty fascination. A few dared to ask questions about his experiences, Gyorgy replied in a philosophical detached tone of voice. He was coming to grips with the realization of having lived through one of the worst tragedies ever in the history of mankind. His focus was to find his family, discover who had survived and reclaim his life while assimilating the completely inexplicable experiences of the concentration camp into his present and future in order to build a meaningful whole. This film is certainly one of the best Holocaust films made. It should be viewed by anyone wanting to understand the subject from a first person perspective. Another highly recommended film in a similar vein is about several generations of a Jewish family who owned a highly successful business, the film is "Sunshine" starring Ralph Fiennes and Rachel Weisz. Erika Borsos (pepper flower)

Lajos Koltai's "Fateless" deserves far more fame in the United States than it has achieved. "Schindler's List" and "The Pianist" have the reputations here, but "Fateless" goes far deeper than any fictional film I have ever seen in giving the audience the total, painful reality of what it must have been like to be a Holocaust victim. Gyurka (Marcell Nagy, a movingly natural young actor) is a 14-year-old Jewish boy in Budapest in 1944. One day, headed for work--his father has already been sent to a labor camp, so school is no longer an option--he is rounded up in a random sweep of the city's Jews and bundled off to a series of concentration camps. In the camps, he is beaten, humiliated and starved nearly to death, for no other reason than that he happened to be on the wrong bus at the wrong time. Liberated after a year of unimaginable suffering, he goes back home to neighbors who find his presence an unwelcome reminder of the recent unpleasantness. The story in "Fateless" is not what matters, but the sheer randomness of events in the camps, as Gyurka finds himself moved about like a pawn on a chessboard, among an ever-changing sea of faces. Suffering is the only constant, and Koltai--working from the brilliant screenplay by Holocaust survivor and Nobel Prize winner Imre Kertesz--gives us Gyurka's physical and mental anguish in bas-relief. Koltai films the story as a series of sharp vignettes, each ending in a fadeout as soon as it has made its point. "Fateless" is rigorous and austere in its rejection of scenes of outright violence; the most piercing scene shows Gyurka, starving and feverish in his bunk, remembering his stepmother's steaming cauldron of homemade soup. Framed by the heartbreaking score of master film composer Ennio Morricone, "Fateless" masterfully brings home the reality of the Holocaust. The DVD contains an interesting mini-documentary about the filming of "Fateless" (including some unintentionally funny English subtitles from the original Hungarian) as well as a riveting interview with Imre Kertesz, who explains why "Schindler's List" is unacceptable as a portrayal of the Holocaust. "Spielberg depicts the Holocaust as some sort of victory for humanity," Kertesz says, "but there was no victory with the Holocaust." Indeed, at the end of "Fateless," Gyurka can't get any triumph over his torturers, or even any sympathy from his neighbors. All he has is the ability to accept what has happened to him, without self-pity, and the courage to go on living. That is the whole point of "Fateless"--and, one might say, of all human existence.

In less than 2 hours, a viewer can feel the horror - and surprisingly - the few moments of deep unexpected joy - of the Holocaust. Hungarian director Lajos Koltai lowered us "step-by-step" from the luxurious beauty of 1944 Budapest through the slow descent of the round-up of the Jews, so slowly that the viewer, like the 15-year-old main character, never knew what hit us. Like the boy, we accept the Holocaust in all its terror and absurdity, aided by a magnificent sound score.

Each scene is like a chapter in the original book, written by 2002 Nobelist Imre Kertesz, himself a Jewish Holocaust survivor. Avoiding cliches, the film focuses on realistic details: men and boys in striped uniforms made to stand for hours, their bodies sagging; the straw in the mattresses; the boy's swollen knee and empty eyes; the jocularity and cruelty among the prisoners; and the fate and luck involved in the hero's miraculous survival.

I am not a fan of Spielberg's well-intentioned "Schindler's List," which I found to be as inauthentic as most Hollywood films. "Fateless," however, is authentic, creative and original in every detail. A massive $12 million budget rebuilt an Auschwitz in Hungary that was totally convincing. The somber sepia tones conveyed the dolor and pathos of the camps. Vivid color returns when the camp is liberated by Americans. Our young, forever changed hero, returns in a trance-like state to his ruined city.

In the nature of true humanity, the boy refuses to be ruined. He must carry on with his life for reasons not even he can understand: the primeval urge to survive against all odds and regain his life.

Extremely well made portrayal of Hungarian Jews just proir to and after deportation to the death camps. I found it very disturbing and moving. The acting was excellent as was the atmosphere and conditions in the camps.Very heavy and dark movie.Leaves you stunned long after the credits roll.

This is an excellent film about a young Hungarian Jewish boy captured by the Nazis in WWII and sent to the concentration camps. Very real, very disturbing. You watch it in horror wondering how any group of human beings could be so mean. It examines the complex emotions that the boy goes through before, during and after being held prisoner.