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Fateless Reviews
While I definitely think the subject matter is important and it's not a badly made film, it just wasn't for me. Or maybe it was just my mood the day I tried to watch it- but either way, I couldn't put myself through it. The acting is good, and it's not that it isn't interesting- I just couldn't put myself through it.
An interesting movie about the personal experience of a Hungarian Jew during the Holocaust. Still, you cannot really empathize with the weird apathetic personality of the main character until the last reflections of the movie.
Rising Above Personal Horror, learning the Meaning of Life in a Concentration Camp--Hauntingly beautiful!!
This is a great movie based on the autobiographical novel by Nobel Prize winning novelist Imre Kertész. It tells the story of a teenage Hungarian Jewish boy sent to the Nazi death camps near thye end of the war. The horrors of the camps, and of the Nazi's antisemitism in general, are well represented but not the major concern of the film. It is much more about survival -- bodily and spiritually -- amid the banality of evil in the camps. The viewer hopefully will agree with the boy in the end that life is worth living and that more important than the horrors is the reality that some happiness could be found even in the midst of the evil of Auschwitz and Buchenwald.
The cinematography was beautiful.
The cinematography was amazing. This movie moved me beyond words. Seeing atrocities being carried out in a concentration camp through the eyes of a young boy in his teens made me weep. Its an intense tale of survival through unimaginable situations.
Some beautiful images that rely more often on our prior understanding of Holocaust knowledge than embedding us in the character's struggles.
Of all the Holocaust films I've seen.. this has to be the most raw, graphic, disturbing and sad.... I hope God will forgive all the wrong that humankind has done....
Very compelling and original take on the Holocaust. The story and acting could have been sufficient to make this a perfect film, if not for a few stumbles by veteran cinematographer but freshman director Lajos Koltai. Still, this is a very well done film overall, well worth seeing, and a movie that makes me interested to see more movies from Hungary.
When several years ago I first read SORSTALANSAG ("Fatelessness"), the debut of Hungarian novelist Nobel laureate Imre Kertesz, I was struck by its unusual take on the Holocaust. Most stories about the concentration camps speak of how the human spirit can survive monstrous and hellish conditions, but Kertesz, a Holocaust survivor himself, suggests that to call the camps monstrous or hellish is to admit that the human spirit was in some way affected or oppressed by them after all. When I heard that a film was going to be made from the novel, with Kertesz himself penning the screenplay, my expectations were high. While I do prefer the novel to the film, I found the film quite moving indeed, and among its few faults one does not find, thanks to Kertesz's involvement, the usual ridiculous tropes of Hollywood adaptations. The novel was autobiographical, and the film is even more so. In 1944 young Gyorgy Koves (played by Marcell Nagy), part of a Budapest Jewish family, says goodbye to his father, called up for war labour. (Those who know Budapest will marvel at how well 1940s Budapest is reconstructed for the film.) Koves doesn't suspect that mere weeks later, he and several of his peers, and ultimately an enormous amount of their Jewish neighbours are sent off to Auschwitz. Koves survives the extermination camp, only to pass through Buchenwald and end up labouring in appalling conditions in Zeitz. The bulk of the story is Koves' experiences in the concentration camp, learning from a fellow Hungarian prisoner (Aron Dimeny) the need to keep one's chin up and take pleasure from the most trifling things in order to avoid the most fatal of emotions in the camp: despair. Director Lajos Koltai has long experience has a cinematographer, and here he impressively has concentration camp scenes shot in such a way that all colour is drained, and the entirely convincing set design is present here as well. While Kertesz' ending is just as shocking as in the book, the general theme of ordinary acceptance of one's circumstances is not as strongly pronounced through most of the film. This is probably due to the lack of first-person narration here, where Koves can speak at length about his feelings. Some of the scenes are stiched together very loosely in the film, so that at one moment the ill Koves suffers in a packed tent and at the next moment he finds himself in a fairly well-equipped officer's hospital with little explanation for the viewer. The liberation of the camp similarly comes suddenly here: after an extremely brief scene of Koves hearing gunfire in the distance at night, we immediately go to a sunny scene where people are walking around freely. New to the film is an exchange between Koves and an American soldier, impressively played by Daniel Craig who for better and worse is now better known as the new James Bond. Other changes from the novel, though not too objectionable, include the addition of a young love for Koves before he is sent off to the camps, and the absence of the social conflicts between Yiddish-speaking ("real") Jews and the more assimilated Jews of Hungary, and between those who just want to get with their lives and those who naively plan of a new, more just Communist Hungary. Among films on the Holocaust, FATELESS is one of the very best. I'm very much appalled that it received such limited distribution, for as a film in itself, it is certainly a five-star affair. My comments and reservations on it are those of one who is keeping always the original novel in mind. If you don't care too much to read the book, see FATELESS anyway and ignore my points. I only wish that the one theme that made the novel so unique and punch-in-the-gut unexpected were more present here.
What shall I say, It was a fair movie. This is neither good or bad. But it seem kind of distant when it comes to the colours and the feeling of this film, natural light would be nice enough. It kind of force us to burst into tears. I wish I could give it a thumbs up, but it just trying to much. Thumbs down.
Beauifully shot Holocaust drama seen through the eys of a Hungarian teenager. Seepia and black & white scenes create a pretty (maybe even too pretty) picture of the said death camps. Daniel Craig pops in towards the in a cameo role but the film is mainly carried by the young Marcell Nagy. Somehow this is still missing the emotion and brutality which the subject matter definitely deserves. The most expensive Hungarian movie ever made but still we're mostly in closed spaces (and propably in studio stages).
A Hungarian death camp story that is visually nice but storywise distant. Some scenes do work quite well but mostly there isn't much of anything that hasn't been seen before.
This film is hard to watch, but the performances are profound and the cinematography is breath taking. The depths of suffering seem to be limitless, and thiis film portrays that brilliantly. I do not recommend this film for children. It is a mature work that is completely disturbing. While similar films capitalize on the Holocaust brutality, this is a different perspective regarding the erosive effects of the endless, dehumanizing routine upon the psyche. How anyone was able to survive one of these camps, then return to normal society, is beyond me.
I had pretty high expectations for this film, but I was a little disappointed. Every scene was beautifully shot and the score was amazing. My main complaint is that the movie is rather mild considering the context. The lack of violence detaches me from the suffering of Gyorgy, making it lack the emotional attachment. Gyorgy's reflection on the camp is well done at parts (e.g. on the tram), but it is also a little angsty, overly existential, and incoherent when he runs into the girl on the stairs. With a little more violence, better script and longer run time towards the end, Fateless could have been significantly more poignant.
"Fateless" is a very unique Hungarian holocaust film about a child's concentration camp experience wherein he realized that there no matter how difficult life is, the sense of happiness will find its way to reach out weary souls...