Fateless
Directed by Lajos Koltai

A cynic’s response to the “genre-fication” of the Holocaust as film would be that there are no surprises, no new ways to present the same well-covered material. On the one hand, one can never truly be desensitised to the grim horror of mass genocide. On the other — especially when it comes to tales of survival — we are all too familiar with many of the inevitable themes, plot points and characters.

At first, Fateless — the first feature by veteran cinematographer Lajos Koltai (Being Julia, Mephisto), based on screenwriter Imre Kertész’s Nobel-prize winning semi-autobiographical novel of the same name — doesn’t seem to distinguish itself from the rest of the pack: boy on the verge of manhood is abruptly separated from his family and has no clue what atrocities lie in store. Yet its hypnotic, almost meditative tone draws the viewer into its haunting reverie; it’s an episodic, reflective, colour-drained two and half hours yet the time passes quickly.

Rather than driving home the brutal realities of life in a concentration camp, Fateless tells the oft-overlooked story of Hungary’s largely assimilated Jewish population, “follow[ing] the soul of a boy” who is not a man by the story’s conclusion, so much as a boy who has managed to survive through quiet reasoning in an environment that defies reason.

One of the most interesting aspects of the film is the way in which it does not end when Gyuri — its thoughtful protagonist — is liberated from Buchenwald. Presented with the opportunity to immigrate to America, instead he chooses to return to Budapest, where he is confronted with the inability of society — Jewish and non-Jewish alike — to relate to the person he has become.

He is neither hopeful nor pessimistic about the future and there is no grand sense of redemption, no “fresh start,” just an attempt to reconcile an unthinkable past with the realities of the present. (Thi!nk)

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