Fateless

Star Review

There have been many films about the holocaust but none quite as intimate and personal as Hungarian director Lajos Koltai's Fateless. Based on the semi-autobiographical novel by Nobel Prize winner Imre Kertesz, Fateless is a hauntingly beautiful film whose narrative unfolds in the form of miniature vignettes rather than peak dramatic moments. The film is seen from the perspective of 14-year-old Gyuri Koves (Marcell Nagy), who spent a year in Buchenwald during the last days of World War II and who provides the narration. Unlike most films about the holocaust, it stipulates that happiness and beauty can co-exist along with deprivation and despair.   Marcell Nagy is outstanding as Gyuri, the young man who moves from a childlike innocence to world-weariness in the span of one year. With his soulful face and expressive eyes, he is almost a detached observer, quietly pondering his fate. Pretending to be sixteen, Gyuri escapes the gas chamber and is sent to Buchenwald and then to a smaller camp. The scenes of murder, death, and dying at the camps are thankfully left to the imagination and the film focuses on Gyuri's personal reactions to what he sees around him.   The most discussed aspect of the film takes place in Budapest after the liberation. Gyuri feels alone and even expresses a sort of homesickness for the camaraderie he felt at the camp. His "happiness", according to Kertesz, who also wrote the screenplay, is not a form of denial but an act of rebellion against those who do not see him any longer as a human being, only as a victim. It was a way of assuring his responsibility, of defining his own fate rather than having others decide it for him. It also adds a portal to the sublime.

Howard Schumann on 13th July 2006

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Film Description

One of the very best films ever made about the Holocaust. Imre Kertész adapts his own novel (based on his childhood experiences) about a Jewish boy who tries to come to terms with the new hellish world that faces him when he is sent to Auschwitz. The last scene, in which the narrator confesses that he misses the concentration camp when confronted with the uneasiness of post-war Budapest, adds a shocking complexity to the work that most Holocaust dramas would not dare confront.

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DVD Extras

• Deleted scenes
• Interviews
• Gallery
• Trailer.

Film Details

Cast

Marcell Nagy

Technical Details