Stellead Don't listen to the Hype. It's awful

Bessie Smyth Great story, amazing characters, superb action, enthralling cinematography. Yes, this is something I am glad I spent money on.

Quiet Muffin This movie tries so hard to be funny, yet it falls flat every time. Just another example of recycled ideas repackaged with women in an attempt to appeal to a certain audience.

Allissa .Like the great film, it's made with a great deal of visible affection both in front of and behind the camera.

Turfseer The Nazi program to exterminate the Jews was designed to proceed both quickly and slowly. The 'quick' approach was initially carried out by four special killing squads, the Einsatzgruppen, who operated in the occupied territories of the Soviet Union, following Germany's invasion of that country in June 1941. One of the most egregious of these killing squads' actions occurred in the city of Kiev over a two day period in late September 1941, where over 30,000 Jews were machine-gunned to death and buried in a ravine at Babi Yar. At a certain point, the Nazis decided that there was a more "efficient" way to conduct mass murder, so extermination camps were soon constructed and put into operation.The Jews who were not murdered right away were sent to concentration camps as forced laborers. This was the 'slow' approach, where these people were literally worked to death. Rather than exploiting the concentration camp inmates for economic gain, the Nazis and their minions often ran these camps merely for the sadistic pleasure of torturing their victims on a daily basis. It hardly would have been much 'fun' (in their eyes) to simply stick everybody in a gas chamber and have no one to lord over. 'Fateless' is the story of one such victim--György Köves—based on Nobel Prize winner Imre Kertész's semi-autobiographical novel, which chronicled his own life as a teenage Holocaust survivor.There have been many films about the Holocaust, but I believe the ones that really work are those that are replete with a myriad of truthful details. 'Fateless' begins in Budapest, Hungary, with the 14 year old György returning home just as his father is about to be deported to a concentration camp as a forced laborer. Family members and neighbors are in attendance and each one is believably depicted, with distinctive personalities. Of particular interest is a former stockbroker (one of György's father's old friends) who erroneously believes that Jews are being used as 'bargaining chips' by the Germans. When one of the neighbors mentions extermination camps in Poland, the father's old friend emphatically states that this could never happen in Hungary and negotiations were already under way between the Germans and the Allies, which would lead to the end of the war and a successful outcome for the Jews. This wishful thinking was typical of most members of the Jewish communities during the Holocaust, and accounted for the lack of any attempt to escape before each victim was deported to the gas chambers.'Fateless' superbly conveys the escalating horror as the Hungarian Jews are rounded up and put on trains to Poland. In György's case, while on a bus on his way to a factory where he's been assigned to work, a policeman orders everyone off who's wearing a Yellow star. Thousands of Jews are marched through the streets and end up crammed into stables, where they're stripped of their valuables and then packed in to cattle cars on the way to Auschwitz. In a memorable scene, the Jews who are dying of thirst, beg a soldier for water as the train makes its last stop in Hungary. The soldier wants them to pay for the water and insists on getting paid first. The man in the train asks for the water first and the soldier curses them for being Jews and allows the train to leave, without giving them any water.When György arrives at Auschwitz, a man whispers to him that when he's asked how old he is, he should say sixteen. By posing as a sixteen year old, György saves himself from death in the gas chambers. A younger looking kid who's part of György's group, isn't so lucky. A German-speaking, Hungarian Jew believes that his work as an engineer will save him but when he attempts to negotiate with the SS officer, he ends up on the line headed for the crematorium. As it turns out, György only stays at Auschwitz for a few days; subsequently he spends time at Buchenwald and then is transferred to Zeitz, a provincial work camp.The bulk of 'Fateless' chronicles the various degradations the camp inmates suffer at the hands of their German overseers and local collaborators. Early on, a sadistic 'Kapo' (described as a Gypsy homosexual criminal by one of György's fellow inmates) punches György in the face for not following orders quickly enough. An older inmate, Bandi Citrom, a Hungarian Jew who's spent most of his prior incarceration in a work camp in Ukraine, takes György under his wing, and teaches him how to cultivate his "self-esteem'. One practical technique he teaches György, is to ration his food every day, to maintain his strength. Not all of György's fellow prisoners are so altruistic including one Yiddish speaking Jew who maintains his own black market trade for sought after items in the camp.In addition to the paltry food provisions, the prisoners are often forced to stand for hours exposed to the elements. If they fall, they will be taken away and shot. In a harrowing scene, three recaptured escapees are hung in front of all the camp inmates while they again, stand for hours. György ends up back at Buchenwald and just before the camp's liberation, he almost dies after his knee becomes infected with maggots. Fortunately, he's brought to the camp infirmary where a Polish inmate helps him get better.The film continues with memorable scenes, which chronicles György's return to Budapest. To name a few, Daniel Craig's cameo as an American soldier counseling György, the exposure of a Hungarian who collaborated as a guard working for the SS and an indifferent train conductor who wishes to kick György off a street car because he doesn't have a ticket.'Fateless' ends on a hopeful note as György, a young man stripped of his youth, vows to move forward, subsuming feelings of hate. It's a film that's a must-see as the Holocaust must not be forgotten.

Jugu Abraham 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.

vic5014 A visual masterpiece and one of the most moving, haunting films you will ever see. This is truly a film you will never forget. The cinematography is breathtaking and unflinchingly gritty and real and I applaud the director's decision to focus on a single person in order to avoid overwhelming the audience with the sheer magnitude of the events depicted. There is a lengthy interview with the author of the Nobel Prize winning memoir that is the basis for the movie, in which he criticizes prior films, most notably Schindler's List, as being too focused on historical accuracy and the big picture. I don't know if I agree, but his insistence on focusing on a single person's experience does make this film stand out among the many Holocaust films. It also makes the movie far easier to relate to and comprehend as it simply depicts the struggles of one young boy as he attempts to survive and later understand the unimaginable. I would have liked to see a little more of the aftermath, but perhaps the source material simply does not mention this or the author did not wish to have it included in the film and the director has taken great pains to conform to Imre Kertész's wishes and to the book. At any rate, it may be for the best that this is simply hinted at when the boy claims some of his experiences in the camps can only be described as beautiful and there are allusions at the end to deep psychological trauma. The acting is superb and Marcell Nagy does a terrific job of conveying György's experiences without seeming overly self-aware or like he's acting at all.

psi_rover FATELESS is one of the best Holocausts film ever made showing how adolescence can suddenly be interrupted by war. In contrast with other World War II classics like The Schindler's List and The Pianist, FATELESS did not focus on the gruesome images and unnecessary pains of war, but rather the film showed another dimension of the universal truth by which most people fails to see and realize.Gyorgy is fourteen, a boy who gradually understand that life and survival is not that easy in the kind of world he is currently living. "And then I understand the simple secret of our universe, I can be killed, anywhere and anytime." ironically said by the boy when he was in Auswitz and a series of bombing occurred in towns nearby. We can feel the depressing mode of the film because of the characters will to survive hunger, cold weather, humiliation and death but it never instill too much horror because it did not show how the defenseless Jews are massacred by the Nazis or how they suffered inside the gas chambers. As the days go by in the camps, despite of being scared of what might happened, it seemed that he is rather bewildered by the war, he has no time to mourn and all that he can think of is how to survive.When the boy returned to his home in Hungary, he missed the brotherhood and the simple life inside the concentration camp, where you can easily appreciate what it is like to be happy.FATELESS is not just a Holocaust masterpiece but it is a testament of truth, the truth that no matter how random, dark and hard life can be, happiness, just like the air we breath will find its way out from a suffocating enclosure to give us life. FATELESS is not for everyone, it is not a typical movie that you'll always expect that something is going to happen but it is a film with a lot of symbolisms between its scenes. FATELESS shows how turmoil, pain and hopelessness can suddenly give happiness its sweetest flavor.