Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #11412 in DVD
• Released on: 2006-08-21
• Rating: Suitable for 12 years and over
• Aspect ratio: 1.78:1
• Format: PAL
• Original language: Hungarian
• Subtitled in: English
• Number of discs: 1
• Running time: 134 minutes

DVD Description
You can close your eyes. You can turn away. But you will never forget.

A historical drama based on Nobel Laureate Imre Kertesz's novel about a Hungarian Jewish boy’s experience of the Holocaust.

Directed By LAJOS KOLTAI Academy Award ® Nominee (Max, Being Julia, Just Cause, Home for the Holidays, Mother, Out to Sea, Mephisto, Malena) Screenplay Adaptation By Nobel Prize-Winner IMRE KERTÉSZ From His Celebrated Novel Fatelessness. Original Score By ENNIO MORRICONE 5 Time Academy Award ® Nominee

Fateless is a deeply moving tale of a Hungarian Jewish boy and his quest for the meaning of his past. A prestigious edition to the Holocaust canon that includes Spielberg’s Schindler’s List and Polanski’s The Pianist.

Synopsis
A historical drama based on Nobel Laureate Imre Kertesz's novel about Hungarian Jews during the Holocaust.

Peter Bradshaw, The Guardian,
4 Stars. ‘An extremely powerful film’ ‘outstanding’ Film of the Week

Customer Reviews

Best Holocaust film.
I have watched quite a few Holocaust films, but Fateless is the best. The best scene is when the jewish boy is asked how he feels to be back in his home town of Budapest. He replies: Hatred. That sums it up for his experience, but he got something which you can only really appreciate in extreme circumstances: the real love from another human being in the camp. So should he put that behind him ,and move on ,as others who did not experience the extremes of the camps say in the film. That love will remain with him as a real reality which he does not want to erase. This film illustrates the experience of extreme circumstances to which others who did not have, can possibly understand. Though as the director admits, no film can really show the horrors in the eyes of victims. But this film comes closer than many other Holocaust films. You must watch this film many times. It is first-class. Well written, directed and produced.

An excellent Holocaust film
Lajos Koltai's harrowing film Fateless (Sorstalanság) is based on the semi-autobiographical novel of the same title by the Nobel Prize winning author Imre Kertész, who also wrote the screenplay. It is set in 1944, as Hitler's Final Solution becomes policy throughout Europe.

The film follows the fate of 14 year-old György Köves from Budapest, who finds himself swept up by cataclysmic events beyond his comprehension; experiencing first Auschwitz, followed by Buchenwald and Zeitz concentration camps before returning to a very different home from the one he left behind.

Fateless cleverly explores the contrasts of the unity and brotherhood that developed between inmates of the camps with the sense of alienation that many experienced upon returning home when the war was over.

The film features many poignant scenes that, for me, sets it apart from other Holocaust films. One hypnotic example is a grueling roll call that has the prisoners stood outside for hours on end.

Lajos Koltai: "Kertesz has a phrase in the book about them standing there `like wind blowing through a forest'. I wanted these scenes because the difficult thing in the camp was not being beaten up or physically tortured, but the time spent in this place. I had to realise this by using effects of music [by Ennio Morricone] and movement. I met a Hungarian dancer who specialises in showing the movements of the suffering or dying and I prepared a kind of realistic choreography with him. Morricone composed an `anthem of solitude' for the sequence."

Inevitably perhaps, the film has been compared to Schindler's List, but in its favour, it lacks the melodrama. It also lacks the sentimental Hollywood schmaltz of Life is Beautiful. Indeed, it is its un-sentimentality that sets it apart, and for me, makes the film so powerful.

The other strength of the film is that as the viewer is drawn into the narrative, Koltai manages to turn the traditional Holocaust movie ethos on its head by asking not how we react to scenes of such horror, but instead, what it must be like to get so accustomed to such an environment that it becomes what its participants would regard as 'ordinary'.

The acting throughout is excellent, notably that of Marcell Nagy who plays the lead role of György, who, despite maintaining the stoic belief that 'there's nothing too unimaginable to endure', seems to physically waste away as the film progresses.

The cinematography is also faultless, and Ennio Morricone's score adds another dimension to an already amazing film.

I thought that it would be difficult to watch this film, and I wasn't wrong, but...
"Fateless", based on a novel written by Nobel Prize winner Imre Kertész, is the directorial debut of Lajos Koltai. Truth to be told, if his next films are like this one, I know that I want to watch them...

The story is set in 1944, in Budapest. The main character is Gyorgy Koves (Marcell Nagy), a young Jewish boy that is separated from his family and sent to a concentration camp. He doesn't understand why being a Jew means that he cannot live in Hungary anymore, and he feels extremely sad and alone. Despite that, he manages to make new friends in the labor camp, and is even able to find fleeting but marvelous moments of beauty in the hostile environment he inhabits.

I thought that it would be difficult to watch this film, and I wasn't wrong. There is too much human suffering not to care... All the same, the unexpected beauty of "Fateless" is sometimes striking, and captivating. I think that the message that both Kertész and Koltai want to give us is that human beings can face the most adverse situations, and still prevail, if they keep their faith. Highly recommended!

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