User Reviews

"Fateless (Sorstalanság)" has to answer: Why make yet another non-documentary film about the Holocaust? While of course every victim and survivor had an individually horrific experience and are essential witnesses, for film viewers, what unique viewpoint or story is there to watch that we haven't seen through tears before?

It takes quite a while for the viewer to understand that the point of Nobel-prize winning Imre Kertész's adaptation of his debut, semi-autobiographical novel is to tell the specific story of Hungarian Jews, as zero context is provided for the opening, anecdotal scenes, no dates, no background information on where in World War II we are starting from and not even how much time is passing in the first third of the film as the Nazis' net tightens on Budapest's Jews.

Perhaps director Lajos Koltai's goal in not providing the kind of context that was carefully established on films where he was the cinematographer, "Sunshine" and "Max," was to help us understand the bewilderment of the diverse Jewish community-- observant and secular, capitalists and workers, young and old, and the randomness of what happened to them. Families coalesce in confusion as they are buffeted by scraps of information, changing government directives, amidst anti-Semitism and collaboration by their fellow Hungarians. We're also supposed to believe, however, that amidst these confusions the young teen protagonist (the very expressive Marcell Nagy) has extensive philosophical discussions with his play mates, and the girl next door who he of course has a crush on, about Jewish identity. Otherwise, his WWII experiences look a lot like the boy's in Spielberg's "Empire of the Sun."

The next third of the film is gruesome experiences in concentration camps as we have seen before, even though these are extremely effectively re-enacted as the huge cast of actors and extras desiccate before our eyes. The production design in recreating the bare shelter and their work detail is the most realistic I've seen in a fiction film, as compared to documentaries and as described to me by a cousin who was the sole Holocaust survivor in our family (I'm named for her father who died in Auschwitz).

Halfway through these horrors, the theme of the film as to the uniqueness of the Hungarian experience starts to come through more than the usual Nazi sadism. Survival is linked to mutual dependence, camaraderie and bonding that comes from their national identification, even more than their shared religion (we see a few inmates nobly strive to maintain Jewish rituals). Individual personalities vividly come through and attitude and the help of one's fellow man turns out to be as important as food, as life is reduced to its most basic elements. The only other film I've seen that communicates this as emotionally was Peter Morley's documentary "Kitty: A Return to Auschwitz," about an essential mother/child bond.

Even during the camp experience, though, some subtleties are lost by lack of context for an English-speaking audience, as a few scenes were confusing to me as there was evidently significances if a character was speaking German or Hungarian, and that difference went by me. The German signage was not translated, so the last part of the boy's Buchenwald experiences was also confusing, unless the point was that he was mystified as well. The voice over narration throughout is, unnecessarily, for philosophical ruminations and does not communicate any additional information than the stark visuals and conversations.

With liberation indirectly providing the first date reference in the film as we presume it is 1945, Daniel Craig has a cameo as an American soldier, in his second appearance in a film in the past year as a Jew, after "Munich." His role recalls Montgomery Clift in Fred Zinnemann's 1948 "The Search," as one of the few films to also portray the wandering Jews as Displaced Persons amidst the rubble of Europe and their destroyed lives and communities.

The last section is movingly unique and vital viewing as we see Europeans, who we know from France to Russia but here particularly Hungarians, will settle into their amnesia and denial of responsibility, what a survivor in a documentary called "the 81st blow" that is the worst of all. While issues of vengeance are included in passing, the survivors seem like ghosts in their tattered prison garb as haunting images that affront and challenge returning normality like echoes of a nightmare that should go away in the light of day. The survivors are suffering from post-traumatic stress and cannot communicate what happened to them in language that the curious, whether family, friends or strangers, can understand-- or want to understand. The visceral impact is again marred by duplicative philosophizing.

Ennio Morricone's score emphasizes the potential for humanity, with beautiful vocalizations by Lisa Gerrard.

As to the cinematography, indiewire reports that the film used bleached-bypass color prints, with laser-applied subtitles: "In the concentration camps, it becomes more monochromatic. And after the liberation, the color comes back in." I saw it still in first run at NYC's Film Forum and the print was already scratched quite a bit, and there were frequent white on white subtitles.

A neighbor whose family had experiences as in the film provided background: "The Germans entered Hungary on March 19, 1944. They had exactly one year to do there what they did in Poland, Czechoslovakia, etc. in 6 years. The deportations started around April-May of 1944 from the outskirts of the country, leaving Budapest to the end and since the war was over the following May, there was no time to deport them as well. Jews from Budapest had to be terribly unlucky to be sent to the chambers. That's why my parents, who survived, and grandparents, who did not, were sent to the camps because they did not live in the capital. It was very haphazardly done from the capital. There were several groups of Jews who were taken from labor camps to the front in the Ukraine."

Critics have compared Fateless to such other award winning films around the same subject, notably Robert Benigni's Life Is Beautiful (aka: La Vita è Bella, 1997), and Spielberg's Schindler's List (1993). Whilst in interview on the UK DVD the director Koltai doesn't mention Benigni's comedy of doom, in passing he does cite the Spielberg, to whom he makes it clear that Fateless is in some degree at least, a riposte. For the director, Schindler's List is "a mistake for those who know what really happened" is his view, which represents "no victory for humanity." The determined un-sentimentality of Koltai's film reflects that view, something which he goes as far as to transpose formally into a particular editing technique - an approach that audiences, more used to a cosy and somewhat predictable view of the Holocaust, will find striking. Koltai's treatment of narrative in his film, characteristically breaking down stark events into short, impressive scenes that fade to black, he terms "a series of études." Such a treatment serves to isolate the protagonists in time, away from the emotionality that a more connected continuity encourages. Indeed for Koltai "time is the... terrible... sentence," and the main motive behind his film, rather than outright shock, and his film has great power precisely through this denial of the usual response.

An easy criticism of Fateless is that conditions of the camp are shown as persistently harrowing, but rarely explicitly violent. The hero Köves is starved, slapped and humiliated, but rarely does the viewer see an on-screen killing, even if the stench of the crematoria is omnipresent. So much is real horror left unseen in fact that at the close of the film, upon his return, there's a scene where Köves is quizzed about the existence of gas chambers by a doubtful citizen at his home station. As a confirmation it is surely unnecessary for the audience, as we've seen them earlier. One suspects that the importance of this brief exchange is instead to assert, once and for all, that Köves acknowledges the reality of the horror he's seen. Whether or not such epic tragedy, and his involvement in it, has enriched his humanity, a la Spielberg, is another matter entirely. By the end, Köves thinks back to his experience almost nostalgically, to the camps where "life was cleaner and simpler" and "where there's nothing too unimaginable to endure." As one might expect from an acclaimed cinematographer, much of Fateless looks superb. Whether its the snowflakes, like the millions of spirits already departed, floating inside the cattle trucks that speed the Hungarian Jews to their fate, or the field of camp mates, paraded mercilessly in the heat, and wavering in their distinctive striped uniforms, Koltai's eye creates haunting moments which remain with the viewer long after the closing credits. Arguably such poetry detracts from the grim reality of the camps in which a good deal of the film is set; but a good deal of the film is shot in muted colours, a blanched scheme, as if the warmth of life has bled out into genocide.

Performances are generally excellent, notably that of Nagy. Interviews on the disc show the young actor's nervousness at some of the more demanding scenes (and the increasing time required spent in make up as his on screen physical deterioration continues) but he plays a role which takes him from the dining room of the family home of Budapest to the death carts of Zief, without faltering. Fateless is an international co-production between Hungary, German and England. All three languages make their appearance, and so - incidentally - does the new James Bond, Daniel Craig, as Köves' liberation approaches. Here playing a concerned GI, who strongly suggests the boy seeks out a new life and a university place in the west, Craig makes a brief, if effective impression. As it turns out Köves' ultimate decision is characteristic of a film that favours reality over idealism.

But for those who seek the unrelenting grimness of camp life depicted as in, say, One Day In The Life of Ivan Denisovitch (1970), or the memorable depiction of the hardening of innocence into vengeful shock (Come And See), Fateless will doubtless prove a slight disappointment. Ennio Morricone's excellent score notwithstanding, which gives events here an occasionally pathetic sheen, this is a film which in many ways raises more issues and questions than it answers, and certainly offers no stereotypical picture of a ghastly time. Instead, by asking the audience to question preconceptions, it stakes claim to being one of the more important Holocaust dramas of our time.

Sorstalanság (Fateless) is the memoir of Imre Kertesz's survival of the Shoah. He won the Nobel Prize for literature in 2002, despite being relatively unknown in the West. At the time, many thought that this was "the Primo Levi prize", i.e. making up for the failure of the academy to award the Nobel to Levi, prior to his death in 1987 (the Nobel is never awarded posthumously).

If one has read Levi's Survival at Auschwitz, or Elie Wiesel's Night, many of the details of the story are familiar. But the craft is in the telling, and the director has done an excellent job of bringing a memoir of brutality and survival to life.

A brief synopsis, without spoilers, is that this is the story of a teenaged boy in Budapest in 1944 who is swept up in the Nazi roundup of Hungarian Jewry, and his experience in the concentration camps. (Elie Wiesel was interred in the same roundup.) The story of how Eichmann tried to ransom Hungarian Jewry to the West is interesting background, for those who are intellectually curious. (The allies were afraid to provide materiel and resources to the Nazis, fearing prolongation of the war. A very sad tale).

Making a film of the Holocaust is always a challenge. A director must strive to make the scenes powerful, without being melodramatic. There is also the danger of making another movie over again (eg, Schindler's List; The Reawakening; Europa, Europa). The challenge is to remain faithful to truth, while bringing artistry to the telling of it.

One device which is used to great effect is the use of very brief scenes, perhaps less than one minute, which tell a brief vignette of the daily life in the camps. Some have very little dialog, and they seem random and unconnected, yet together they add to a deeply moving experience.

Many films of the Holocaust are shattering; a few are hopeful. This is neither, but it is a telling of the story that is watchable for most audiences, yet retains the power to affect a viewer. 8 out of 10.

I saw this on a trip recently to Hungary and I have to say that I was really impressed. It stands up against the bigger movies made regarding this subject, and it stands proudly. It didn't try to tackle the enormity of the Holocaust as one user suggested, rather it tried (and succeeded in my opinion) in tackling the story and fate (or lack thereof) of a young Jewish- Hungarian boy during the second world war. How would one explain this sudden shift in reality to a boy who is still in the process of maturing? How much can he possibly understand? When the ordeal is finished, could anything be "real" again afterwords? I thought the subject matter was challenging enough for it to warrant a second viewing.

Marcel Nagy is spectacular, the director chose an amazing face and voice for the part, the character's attitude towards what's happening is shockingly mature and disaffected. He doesn't break down crying, or screaming , "why?!", he simply accepts that this has happened and tries to deal with it almost entirely inside his head. He is an introvert, speaking softly, and politely to those around him. He doesn't ask too many questions because he already thinks he knows all the answers. And these terrible answers are projected to the audience with the use of his powerful blue eyes, and his vital facial expressions (there are few scenes where the boy looks directly into the camera, and makes eye contact with you, the audience and I almost burst out crying..)

The look of the film was what made the rest so sublime, the grays and blues were so dis-enchantingly beautiful, as horrid in a way it is to call a Holocaust film beautiful, the effect is more of seeing what is inside the mind of an innocent; the dramatization of color desaturating could be considered the gradual removal of that innocence. The best way I could describe this is a 'dreamy nightmare', also so fitting an aesthetic, since a delirium sets in to those suffering, and those watching them suffer - it all becomes so heightened and insane; the men and women here are being stripped of the appreciation of beauty, but kindness among these prisoners remain, and that seems a unique aspect to this story. The fact is that Kertesz's memories include these acts of kindness, and camaraderie, rather than remembering back to it as something so completely horrendous, as as to be denying these victims the right to be human. But they are. In this film, there are no extreme acts of violence or mayhem (some minor, but no guns mowing down innocents like Schindler's List), just a quiet, reflective look at the human condition, and the innocent youth caught in the web of evil's banality.

I think the main problem people had with this film was they were expecting something... a little more dramatic, while this is a very quiet, very slow film that will appeal to those who work on those frequencies.

which word could define the Holocaust ? this film is an answer. for me, one of the most convincing and clear and delicate and honest. the wort experiences as the support for the grow up of a teenager. for self definition. for the build of life. for define the people. for survive. sure, nothing surprising if you do not ignore the science of Istvan Kertesz to give the profound, complete testimony about the experiences of recent past. but the film impress for the art of a 12 years old boy to translate states out of words. the look, the gestures, the steps, the eyes, his eyes, as verdict about a world in need to be itself . and the Central Europe as shadow of past times. I suppose than "Fateless" is the film about Shoah who must see. it is not "Schindler list". and this fact did it useful. because each images represents a word from a precise testimony. about humankind. about the Holocaust. about the price and the fight. to survive.

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 suggests 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. He is, in the Sufi saying, in the world, but not of it and the film unfolds as in a lucid dream that blurs the lines between appearance and reality. Koltai captures this almost matter-of-fact quality as Gyuri says goodbye to his father (Janos Ban) who has been ordered to work in a Nazi labor camp. Because Hungarians did not feel the full brunt of Nazi persecution until the Nazi takeover in 1944, Gyuri thinks his father is just going to have to work hard and that nothing will happen to him. Neighbors and relatives who reassure him that everything will be all right do not further his grasp of reality.

When the boy and his friends are detained on a bus on the way to work, he learns quickly that "his carefree childhood days are now over". Still not comprehending the magnitude of what is taking place, he is annoyed but not frightened and does not seize the opportunity to escape offered by a friendly cop. Even when he arrives at Auschwitz, he sits on the ground shaven and wearing a striped uniform, talking with friends as if he was in a school playground during recess. When Gyuri discovers that "he could be killed at any time, anywhere", he attains a sort of spiritual freedom and his determination to survive is increased. 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. Koltai, a cinematographer for twenty-five years, creates a visual cinematic poem in which his color palette is so muted that we experience the mud and the atmosphere of cold and gray almost viscerally. Sadly, we watch Gyuri's transformation from the confident teenager we saw at the beginning to an emaciated number, his leg so swollen and infected that he can barely walk. In voice-over, however, he talks about the hours between work and the evening meal as one of quiet reflection and about the joy in discovering a piece of meat or potato in his soup. He is also sustained by a friend he develops in fellow Hungarian Bandi Citrom (Aron Dimeny) who protects him and tries to teach him the skills of survival. Bandi, ever the optimist, proclaims, "I will walk down Nefelejcs Street again" One of the surprises in the film is the treatment Gyuri receives at what looks like a camp hospital.

He is cleaned, allowed to sleep alone in a bed and taken care of, a set of circumstances not usually associated with extermination camps, yet based on Kertesz' actual experience. The most discussed aspect of the film, however, takes place in Budapest after the liberation. Gyuri feels more alone than he did at Buchenwald and even expresses a sort of homesickness for the camaraderie he felt at the camp. Friends and neighbors who were not in the camps cannot understand what it was truly like and Gyuri cannot explain it. Even if he could, no one really wants to hear anything that rattles their preconceptions.

He rebels at playing the role of the victim and says, "there is nothing too unimaginable to endure". When asked about the atrocities, he talks of his happiness. "The next time I am asked", he says, "I ought to speak about that, the happiness of the concentration camp. If indeed I am asked. And provided I myself don't forget". 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. For me, it also added a portal into the sublime.

In Budapest, Hungary, the Jewish teenager György Köves (Marcell Nagy) is taken off a bus while going to work in a brickyard and sent to Buchenwald. In the concentration camp, he loses his innocence finding starvation, hatred, selfishness, sickness and death, but also friendship, sympathy and comradeship among the other prisoners.

Movies about holocaust are usually touching and full of emotions. However, "Sorstalanság" is cold, without emotions or feelings and the director never creates an empathic or charismatic lead character. The horror of the concentration camps is shown through a awesome make-up of the cast; stunning faded colors or black and white cinematography contrasting with the bright color when the war is over; a wonderful reconstitution of life in times of war and post-war; and great soundtrack. But unfortunately this movie does not work well in spite of the budget. My vote is six.

Title (Brazil): "Marcas da Guerra" ("Marks of the War")

Saw this film at the AFI Film Festival in Los Angeles. It is an amazingly well made, well acted motion picture about a very difficult subject. The direction and cinematography were excellent. The lead boy was only 12 when the film was shot, yet he delivers a mature, sensitive and deeply emotional performance.

The film is long but very compelling and speaks loudly about man's inhumanity to his fellow man. The message is even more disturbing when told through the eyes of a young teenager who is caught up in the atrocities of the Nazis and their Hungarian allies.

If this film were in English or directed by Steven Spielberg, it would no doubt win numerous awards. Let us hope that "Fateless" is recognized for it's bravery and excellence.

I got to see Lajos Koltai's Fateless almost a year after it had first been presented in Hungarian movie theaters. I had much anticipation and high demands when I sat down to eventually watch it through. Soon I got a little disappointed though, and emerged from my seat after the end credits missing the cathartic realization of having seen a spectacular adaptation of a highly-acclaimed, Nobel-prize winning literary artwork. I have to say, hardly a bit of the original novel's conception came through. In the book the protagonist has a genuine, utterly sarcastic view of the tragic events of the Holocaust, whereas in the movie 16-year-old Marcell Nagy is struggling to show any authentic emotions other than the confusion he might have felt on the set of a film of this grandiosity. He simply does not have the intuition necessary to convey Gyurka's take on the inexplicable behavior of people infected by twisted ideologies. Other acting performances also fall flat discrediting Koltai's every effort to make Fateless a great piece. Photographying, however, is wonderful and sets nicely detailed and very authentic-looking. The faded, almost black-an-white images with the occasional occurrence of the color red is – if I am trying to be careful with my choice of words – very much reminiscent of Schindler's list though.

This film simply lacks courage to rethink the original book in dramatic terms. It escapes into apotheosizing instead of facing the tasks of a director who was brave enough at the first place to think he can tackle an issue as difficult as the holocaust - and that is curiosity, empathy, originality and a sharp eye. Instead you get actors without clear direction, dialogues and offs with little interest,fade outs instead of ideas, beautiful pictures, sepia and Morricone who makes you think you're in some romantic love adventure that somehow might turn out to be very very sad but then it does not... Dull.

Read the novel!

First of all, I have to tell, that I have not read the book yet, so I don't know how the book is like. But in my opinion the movie, in itself is really good. For me the movie had two major meanings. First, that all of us, who were not there in the camps, will never be able even to imagine how that was like. And the second, that people don't really listen to what you want to tell them, they listen to that, what they want to hear, and if your story does not satisfy them, because they want to hear something else, or because they can't accept your point of view, you will be left alone... And you will be lonely even among people of your own kind. And I think that's why this kid is fate-less, he himself tells at the and of the movie, he has to continue his life, which is not possible to continue, and he has to do this alone, because no one ever will understand him. Even fate has forsaken him.

Fateless

reviewed by Sam Osborn of www.samseescinema.com

rating: 2 out of 4

I always find it difficult to dislike films about the Holocaust. There's so much pain on screen that it's nearly as if I feel like a brute not to feel the pain as well. And with Fateless, the pain is continuous. It's the story of a 14-year old Hungarian Jew sent to Aushwitz Concentration Camp during World War II. Shot beautifully by Gyula Pados, the film's color palette and sets are simply striking. But the story leaves much to be desired. Much like Everything is Illuminated, I left the film wondering if I knew any more about the lead character as I knew when entering the theater. Almost without words, the lead character serves only as a mannequin for the horrific crimes he endures. I see the pain but never do I feel it.

My school rented an entire cinema last Friday, so we could see the movie together. I read reviews of it before, but I didn't expect it to be this bad. I had a bad feeling before going to the cinema, because I thought, that while most movies, that are filmed after books are made in 10-15 years this was made in 4, with problems on the set slowing down filming.

It's about a Jewish boy in Hungary, who is taken to Auschwitz and Buchenwald and other camps during the end of WWII. It's hard to tell where he is most of the time, because we only get the boys narration telling us about it, but he never says why he was taken there, which is really frustrating.

The acting if fair, but there are some awful performances like Gyuris neighbor Annamária. I don't know how the director aloud that performance to be in the film. Most of the support cast are good, but most of them don't really have anything to do, or say, they just look like they were meant to be really moving.

The direction is the worst part of the movie, in my opinion. I never wanted to see a dynamic picture, but this was too much for me. The theme of direction is that we get a lot of episodes divided by fade ins and fade-outs. This is incredibly boring and monotonous and makes it hard to watch. Especially when most of the scenes are 1-2 minutes long and sometimes they have no end, or beginning. (Spoiler) Like when Gyuri is at the camp with tents in it. One night its heavily raining and Gyuri comes out from under the tents and goes towards the washing-troughs. It takes him 1 or 2 minutes to get there, because he always slips in the mud. This is a little boring after a while, so one can't help but wonder, why in the world is he going there. It's raining so it can't be that he wants to wash himself. So we wait patiently for him. And just as he reaches his destination what happens? Fade-out...(Spoiler off) We never get to know why he went or what happened there. Frustrating really. And there are some more scenes like this one. No beginning, no end, no meaning, no affect on the story, it's just there.

Another stupid thing about the scenes is that they mostly end with the camera taking a shot of Gyuris face. Most of the times he looks really sadly/seriously at something or is just staring into the "great beyond" (like Ben Affleck does, but this kid is better at it). Now this also gets boring after a while. And we never see what he is looking at or those sort of things. we just get to have his face. And this takes up at least a half hour of the movie.

Another flaw is that the movie is just too beautiful. You know, I never thought Buchenwald was such a pretty place. Most of the scenes are shot like this. Very picture-like, they are like small compositions (maybe thats why people don't move too much). And the fact that the colors are mostly black, pale-white and decay-yellow also add to the feeling that this movie is not life-like. Although I thought the book was good because of that fact.

The music is bad. I love Ennio Morricones music, but here it's just plain old bad. Too romantic... bad.

The dialogs aren't a strong point either. Imre Kertesz's novel was great, but after this movie it's clear that he is no screenwriter. Awkward sentences and words that don't really belong there.

The fact that there are some downright stupid things about it,(Spoiler) like when Gyuris is half-dead in a pile of other dead people, we see everyone naked, except Gyuri. It's not that I want to see the kid naked, but this sort of thing is just too dumb.(Spoiler off) These things make this movie seem a whole lot worse than it could have been.

After Schindler's List there isn't really anything shocking about the film, but that would be alright because the objective of the picture should have been to look at the story of the Holocaust through the eyes of a kid, from another point of view than we have had already seen many times. But the movie fails in that aspect too.

All in all, I am disappointed. This movie adds nothing new to the world of cinema. There is nothing outstanding about it. This movie could have been so much better. But it messed up up. Too bad. Maybe in a 50 years we'll get a good adaptation.

As a kid, I used to think that some of the thoughts I was having were unique to me. I didn't see any of those things in mass media. But slowly and slowly as I read more and I see more films, that set of things that were unique only to me have been reducing in size. Fateless just destroyed that set.

I love movies. They move me, excite and sometimes literally live me breathless. Fateless just shook me up. It struck a chord somewhere deep inside. It revived the memories that I thought I had forgotten, the feelings that I had buried somewhere deep in my psyche.

All the credit has to go to Imre Kertész, the writer of the original source as well as the screenplay writer. He has written an account that is so painfully honest and bold that it breaks through all the clichés of depictions of pain and sorrow, not just in literature and film but in life too.

After a long time I am just itching to get my hands on a book. Don't know when I will take it up though.

'Fateless' was a never-seen blockbuster in Hungary if we can use the term for Hungarian movies. It attracted so many viewers that no Hungarian film has done before and as it's not surprising that a Holocaust-film like this divides the audience. Thousands of readers had fallen in love with Imre Kertész's Nobel-prized novel, and expectations in this case are very high. However this film does NOT have to make any disappointment and opposite to some critics' opinion it holds the same meaning the novel holds. Don't forget that Kertész is the screenwriter too, it is his true story, a man's who went through all these and kept the respect of life so could find happiness after and during this. He agreed this film's value. The movie has some great actors, wonderful pictures and lots of very good, atmospheric scenes with very real memorable characters. The score is extremely beautiful how it's natural if the composer is Ennio Morricone.

There are weaknesses too, of course, some dialogues, mainly in the beginning of the film are not natural (maybe it comes from Kertész's newness in film-writing), it' very disturbing as some weak acting in a few episodes. Marcell Nagy is not a bad choice for the leading role, he has the look and the power in his eyes but in speech he's not convincing, it drops you out of the atmosphere sometimes but it won't bother the not-Hungarian audience.

'Fateless' is an impressive European masterpiece, Hungary should be proud of it.

As in the case of many adaptations, the book is much better - even if the original author wrote the screenplay himself. Nobel Prize winner Kertesz and Koltay, the Oscar nominated cinematographer in his directing debut, are both newcomers to their respective roles and the film bears all the resulting flaws. Morricone is an old pro, but he seems not to have given everything when composing the soundtrack - not much actually, besides his name.

The original book is genius and the film itself was a national cause in Hungary, with heavy government funding, so in some ways it's not surprising that it fails to deliver.

It's easy to tell the movie was shot with the master cinematographer's eye, as it rolls beautifully throughout and it does follow the book's heart-wrenching plot relatively closely.

What it misses, is the book's unique voice. What sets Sorstalansag (Fateless) apart from the ocean of Holocaust books is the young protagonist's withdrawn, uninvolved perspective. He never allows himself to dive into the big questions of life and never protests against his fate - or a lack of it. The book lacks big emotions, those are always formed in the reader, making them all the more powerful.

This is where the film fails miserably. Maybe it was too tempting to go the sentimental route, maybe it's Morricone's uninspired music, maybe it's Koltay's inexperience as a director, but Fateless turns into nothing more and nothing less than a relatively well made Holocaust film. Enjoyable, if a bit longish.

The great bright spot is young Marcell Nagy, who delivers with precision well beyond his age as the lead character. Whether knowingly or by chance, he always has an aura of remoteness about him that nails the original's voice exactly. Even surrounded by some of the best Hungarian actors, the boy carries the film by himself. If for nothing else, it's well worth to see to witness such a stunning performance.

'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

Many directors have made acclaimed movies on the horrors of the Nazi perpetrated holocaust, the gas chambers, and the concentration camps. This work stands out as one of the very few intelligent films reflecting on the effect of the atrocities on those directly and indirectly affected, rather than a clever film milking the pathos of the tragic events. Here is a film that telescopes the tragedy beyond the World War II for the main character a teenage Jewish boy (and the viewer) to the post-war human interactions. Here is a film that does not stop as a celluloid memorial for the Jews, but makes one reflect on human behavior worldwide while facing similar horrors—the Pol Pot genocide in Cambodia, the tragic ethnic cleansing of Muslims in post-Tito Yugoslavia, the genocides in Rwanda and Darfur…the list goes on.

How does this film end up being different? The Nobel prize winning story alludes to camaraderie of the oppressed in concentration camps, prisons and other unusual bonding of strangers for survival. The 'free' world rarely provides that bonding. The film and the story are thus made up of two parts: the incarceration and the freedom. In the free world, a German asks the survivor if he ever saw the gas chambers and the honest answer is "no." And that comforts the guilty suspicion of the non-Jewish German.

Much of the film centers on the capturing the emotions of the boy, without spoken words. This might appear unusual but study the gradual use of shadows, the dirt, and the evidence of tears. The controlled bleached color prints add to the visceral visual power of the film. These are images that you will not forget even after you leave the theater (or switch off the Indian TV channel, as in my case)

There are sequences that suggest more than what is shown on screen. A guard takes an odd liking for the young boy and keeps staring at him instead of others, once in the suburbs of Budapest and then again in the concentration camp. The special care in the infirmary could allude to Nazi medical experiments. Delving on those details would have reduced the real strength of the film. It is easy for many whose fate was death in the camps. There are half dead men who refuse to accept their fate as they are carried away to the gas chambers. And there are young men fated to live and survive in a difficult inhospitable world and accept this as their fate and move on. They are the "fateless" few.

This work turned out to be remarkable because of the outstanding team behind it. The story and screenplay is by 2002 Nobel prize winner Imre Kertesz who won the prize a few years before the film was made. The story is semi-auto biographical The acclaimed Hungarian cinematographer turned director Lajos Koltai and Italian Ennio Morricone team up once again after the two weaved celluloid magic in "The legend of 1900." The camera is not with Koltai but Gyula Pados this time, but Koltai would have contributed to the photography. Another marvel of the film are the vocal renderings of Australian Lisa Gerrard (of Dead can dance) that alternate with pan pipes conducted by Morricone.

Three remarkable films on the Nazi atrocities evoked similar feelings for me: the outstanding 10-hour cinematic docudrama by Hans-Jurgen Syberberg "Hitler-A film from Germany" that led essayist Susan Sontag to write an equally outstanding critical essay on the film, Zoltan Fabri's "The Fifth Seal" (referring to the Bible's "Revelations") the finest Hungarian film that needs to be seen more widely also based on a major Hungarian novel (by Ferenc Santa) and Istvan Szabo's touching mystical and allegorical "Budapest Tales" that said everything about the Nazi occupation without a shot of the concentration camps by portraying dislocated Jews, strangers to one another, coming together to put a symbolic trashed Budapest tramcar back on the rails far away from the city. Arguably these three films along with "Fateless" constitute the finest and the most accomplished body of cinema on the subject. If you prefer straight easy tear-jerkers try Steven Spielberg's films on the subject, Polanski's "The Pianist," Benigni's "Life is Beautiful," or even Louis Malle's "Au revoir, les Enfants"—all good, acclaimed films but not quite in the same league.

While documenting the harrowing experience of living in the concentration camps under Hitler's final solution days to a tee, Fateless misses much of the emotional impact that such a powerful story wishes to tell. Granted the translation to English, as well as the overdone topic of the Holocaust in recent cinema, might in and of itself put the viewer at a disadvantage to connect with it's main character's plight, but this discredits the movie's authentic feel. So authentic is this recollection of a most unimaginable reality, that the script in comparison to the imagery on screen does nothing but sterilize the action. What we have here is the source material being coldly and methodically applied to the truly nightmarish, immersive concentration camp experience that this director did strive to capture more thoroughly then any other I've seen. What could have been a movie on par or even surpassing a Schindler's List in terms of realism and authenticity and becoming one of the dominant Holocaust film experiences ends up being a powerfully shot, but emotionally distant piece.

This film when I saw it, was hyped up to be brilliant and as good as the Pianist, which it was nowhere near, it was wishy washy, without emotions and was hard to engage in the hardships, It needed more gore and was one of the happiest Hollocaust films ever made and portrays the camp as OK and like they were having fun in the beginning.

Very un-heartfelt and had a true bad bit of acting by Daniel Craig (who shouldn't have been in it, Hollywoodiseing it.

Not one I can recommend, but if you like wishy washy untrue Holocaust films, this is for you. this is due to in the camp them helping him when he is down and out and giving him a nice bed, you cant see the Germans doing this, its was against their ethos.

Anyway over the whole i would give it 5.5-6 out of 10.

The original novel is an extraordinary masterpiece. The movie lacks exactly those aspects that make the novel great: the unique interpretation of the Holocaust by a non-religious assimilated Jewish boy from Budapest. I wonder if a more professional screenwriter would have been able to transform the novel into a better movie.

N.B. The author of the novel was the film's screenwriter.

N.B. Had I not read the book, I would have been unable to understand much of the movie.

N.B. I think "fateless" is an inaccurate translation of the Hungarian title "sorstalanság".

Finally, the novel itself is by far the very best one ever written about the Holocaust. Runner-ups: Babi Yar by A. Kuznetsov and Night by Elie Wiesel.