Fateless

Fateless
by Lajos Koltai

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DVD details

Actor: ?ron Dim?ny, B?la D?ra, B?lint P?ntek, Marcell Nagy, P?ter Fancsikai
Director: Lajos Koltai
Brand: Image Entertainment
Producer: Alexandra Stolle
Producer: Andras Hamori
Producer: Bernd Helthaler
Producer: Endre S?k
Producer: Erika Tarr
Producer: Ildiko Kemeny
Writer: Imre Kert?sz
DVD: Region Code 1
Audio: English (Subtitled); English (Original Language); German (Original Language); Hungarian (Original Language), Dolby Digital 2.0 Stereo
Format: AC-3, Color, Dolby, DVD, NTSC, Subtitled, Widescreen
Picture Format: 1.33:1
Running Time: 140 minutes
DVD Release Date: 2006-05-09
Audience Rating: R (Restricted)
Studio: Velocity / Thinkfilm

DVD Reviews of Fateless

DVD Review: powerful questions
Summary: 5 Stars

Throughout the movie the scenes evoke helplessness. The characters cannot find answers or answer questions; they fade out to another scene.

The director demonstrates this feeling and truth in the editing, therefore revealing less of the mysteries and horrors of the material. Nonetheless the choice of narrative offers as much in what it leaves out as it does in what it shows us. A daring and inspired motion picture of the human tragedy and what appears to be life's random selection:
"Why did I survive?" "Why am I alive?" "Who am I?"

Questions I often ask myself in my random life but structured world. While watching these horrors I ask do I have the strength to see another holocaust film then I realize I must, I am compelled. It's the least I can do for the memory and for the ones that suffered. Fateless is a masterpiece in cinematic language.

DVD Review: SUBTITLES!
Summary: 3 Stars

Guess I didn't pay close enough attention to the product description. Don't recall seeing that the film was in Hungarian with English subtitles. I've only watched about 1 hour of it so far but found it rather tedious. Maybe it'll get better.
Okay, finished watching the movie. It did get better. The movie is well made, well acted, and realistic. The unfortunate part is the subtitles, as there is a fair amount of rapid dialog and I spent a lot of time just reading the subtitles instead of watching the movie. I'll have to watch it again to appreciate the realistic sets, makeup, and costumes. Worth the money? Yeah, I guess so!

DVD Review: Average
Summary: 3 Stars

I'm not so sure this was a movie that deserves 5 stars. I find the Pianist much more deserving. Either way, the movie was OK but I guess for Hungarian cinema it's the best thing that's come out. It was a typical WWII movie about German occupation, Jews being displaced, and in particular this young boy decided to take the wrong mode of transportation that ended up in Auschwitz and a couple of others. Mauthausen was mentioned, but I'm not sure if he was placed there. I thought that this might've been a little bit different but, it still remained an "average" movie to me.

DVD Review: Psycological Interesting.
Summary: 4 Stars

If you are looking for movies with explicit content abouth the WWII or the Holocaust this in not your movie. However it is quite and interesting story in wich you can see different point of views about this war and what was happening in the end.

A nice movie to have in any collection. Whit a very interesting ending "monolog" from the main character...

DVD Review: On Par with Schindler's List
Summary: 5 Stars

I would like to spend a few lines comparing Fateless to Schindler's List, but not until I describe Fateless first. Fateless is a movie based on Imre Kertesz best-selling novel "Fatelessness" about his own experiences during the Holocaust in Hungary. The film begins with our protagnist witnessing his father being called up to a "labor camp." Later, on his way to work, he himself is grabbed by the SS and transported via rail to Auschwitz, the most evil of all the extermination camps.

On his way, the protagonist encounters evil in many forms. The SS that beat and degrade him and the rest of the Jews without regard for their humanity. Later, in the concentration camps we notice the main characters demise and lost of interest in life. Many of his fellow inmates struggle to get him to care about life and to have hope, but he is just merely to exhausted and disgusted with life to care at this point.

At his most vulnerable point and on the cust of death, liberation comes and the protagonist is saved from a certain death. He then return to Hungary to witness that many people have continued life as if nothing happened. To make matters worse, many of his fellow-countrymen and even his fellow Jews are indifferent to his suffering at best and disgusted by him at worst. We notice that the protagonist is changed. He has no hope. He talks about his experiences and describes them as normal. Not normal in the real world, but normal is his mind.

The movie in itself is very powerful but it leaves you asking many questions. It definitley doesn't provide you with a "happily ever-after" ending. It is an awkward feeling to have a film with such violence and evil and suffering and not have any good come out of it.

Feeling jipped out of a good ending, I went to the Special Features section and found an interview with Kertesz about the film. Imre Kertesz not only wrote the novel "Fatelesness," but he also wrote the script to the film "Fateless." In a section of the interview, Kertesz expresses his disgust for the film Schindler's List. He takes great exception to the "happy" ending portrayed in that film. He argues that there wasn't always a silver lining to the suffering of the Jews. In fact, there hardly was one. The reality of the Holocaust was that there was a massive scale extermination and infliction of suffering with no purpose. There was no greater cause. No good that came out of it. For example, in Schindler's List we see that "Schindler Jews" at the end of the movie and we feel a sense of relief, that there was some good that came out of all that suffering. Also, we witness the Jews waving at Oskar Schindler in that movie and saying "hi boss." Kertesz argues that this is just no factual. Everyday life in extermination camps robbed you of your humanity. The exhaustion, the lack of rational behavior, it all compounded and greatly affected the psyche of the Jews. In Imre Kertesz' case, there was no good that came out of his suffering, so he didn't want to portray a film as such. Therefore, you are left with a raw film with no hope. Suffering and pain for the sake of suffering and pain. It is very powerful and a must-see for everyone. A must-have, especially for those with an interest in the Holocaust and WWII.

Description of Fateless

Don't miss this unforgettable story of a child who had the courage to come home.

Set in 1944, as Hitler's Final Solution becomes policy throughout Europe, Fateless is the semi-autobiographical tale of a 14 year-old Jewish boy from Budapest, who finds himself swept up by cataclysmic events beyond his comprehension. A perfectly normal metropolitan teen who has never felt particularly connected to his religion, he is suddenly separated from his family as part of the rushed and random deportation of his city's large Jewish population. Brought to a concentration camp, his existence becomes a surreal adventure in adversity and adaptation, and he is never quite sure if he is the victim of his captors, or of an absurd destiny that metes out salvation and suffering arbitrarily. When he returns home after the liberation, he missed the sense of community he experienced in the camps, feeling alienated from both his Christian neighbors who turned a blind eye to his fate, and the Jewish family friends who avoided deportation and who now want to put the war behind them.

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