Fateless [DVD]

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.

Watching a film depicting the dehumanizing harshness and brutality of a concentration camp, viewers likely do not expect to find beauty. I have watched this film twice now, and it is its beauty, not its grim, often bleak story line, that seems to have made its first...and lasting...impression on me.The director and cinematographer chose to film Fateless not in black and white, as Schindler's List was done, but in almost colorless tones washed over with sepia and grey, which give the film the appearance of very early photography, the kind your grandparents and great grandparents might have appeared in. And, just when you think you're watching a black and white film, small hints of real color appear, almost the way real colors sometimes show briefly in departing dreams. The film is an impeccably crafted work of visual art, and it is its imagery that most moved me.There are three moments of unexpected beauty that for me were most memorable. The first is a sequence showing prisoners forced to stand at attention, knowing that should they fall they will be punished or put to death. Dressed in their striped uniforms and standing in lines, as the impact of the fear drains their weakened bodies, they begin to shake and to sway. And, the movement is accompanied by the mournful singing of what could be a hymn, richly done by a single female voice. As the camera pans over them, it is almost as though they are one with the music, and the effect is gut-wrenching.The second is a sequence in which the boy makes his way through a downpour in the mud toward a goal which remains ambiguous. As he slips and slides and falls, silhoutted against the falling rain, we no longer see the child he was but simply a human being reduced to the barest of necessities, the need to fight to remain alive. Filmed in black and grey, it is among the film's most powerful symbolic moments.And, finally, a scene in which the barely living boy is laid out among corpses on the threshold of his own death. As he lies there, we see what he sees: a sky filled with flowing clouds that intermittently allow weak rays of sunlight to filter through them. It is a deeply personal, yet universal statement: the few seconds of time most of us will have as we look at our living world for the last time. Almost incongruously, the moment becomes the beginning of his salvation.I am sure other viewers of Fateless will take from it parts of the film that they will treasure. These three were among mine. I intend to watch this film many more times. It is a beautifully rendered work of art.

Fully half this film showed the boy gazing-at people, at objects, at sheets, and so on. The film did show the destruction wrought on Hungary by Anglo-American bombers and then the Russian siege, but failed to mention the mass rapes of Hungarian women (on a level with Berlin), the looting and vandalizing of virtually all Hungarian homes, including the Jewish homes.

I have never before watched such a film as this, but as I have recently read Anne Frank and Alicia Jurman novels, they greatly interested me and I felt compelled to watch a film covering similar grounds. The film held my interest right until the end. Of course I have no idea how accurately the film was portrayed, but it certainly left an imprint on my heart. To imagine that people suffered in this way, and millions of people too, literally breaks my heart. To think of the suffering people and that includes children went through is almost too much to consider. What a moving film this was, there is always a place in my heart for all of the jews that were not only killed but survived this masacre too. SHOCKING!!

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.

A film of intense power. Following a young boy through the horror of the Holocaust and his survival. Moving and emotionally transcendent with the triumph of his survival. Unforgetable moments of visual poesy underscored by Ennio Morricone's sweeping musical genius transforming scenes of utter degradation and despair into possible visions of humanity and possible hope...A film of immense importance to whomever wishes to understand that oppressed people do and will survive as best as they can, or are allowed to, in spite of all.

Excellent casting, realistic setting, and heartbreaking view into a Nobel Prize Winner's nightmarish experiences during the Holocaust. Follows the book surprisingly to the point, a rare effort. A must-see for everyone with the slightest interest in history. In a professional manner, the movie manages to avoid any sentimentalism or graphic victimization of the actual victims of that horrific genocide. Read the book, see the movie, it will stick with you for ever and ever.

Its a very good betrayal of life in concentration camps pity it hasn't got a voice over, I didn't realise it was sub titles, price good delivery good