Fateless
Fateless aka Sorstalanság
Film Guide Tony Tracy
freshfilmfestival Fateless
Fateless Director Lajos Koltai unable to publish for nearly a decade. aka Sorstalanság Koltai was an internationally esteemed When the novel finally appeared in Director of Photography before he 1975, it received little critical attention. Director Lajos Koltai made his directorial debut with Fateless. With the end of communism came the Hungary-Germany-UK/134 mins/2005 This background helps explain the publication in 1990 of the first German- powerful visual quality of a film in which language edition of the novel, and his Cast images have as much, if not more, reputation soon began to grow in Marcell Nagy Gyuri Koves power than words or even plot. Europe. The novel was later published Aron Dimeny Bandi Citrom At 14, Koltai shot his first film on in more than 10 languages and won him Andras M. Kecskes Finn Super 8 – made on holiday with his the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2002. Jozsef Gyabronka Unlucky Man family. At school he wrote and directed Endre Harkanyi Old Kollmann a number of films with his classmates. “I have heard it said before, and now I Daniel Craig US Army Sergeant Graduating from the Hungarian Film can attest to its truth: narrow prison Academy, Koltai eventually came to walls cannot set limits to the flights of Crew work in the state television station. our imagination.” Director Lajos Koltai Koltai finally came to work for (Fateless - novel- page 188) Screenwriter Imre Kertész based on director Istvan Svabo in 1974, shooting his novel ‘Sorstalansag’ a film for him for television. This “We can never start a new life. We can Music Ennio Morricone resulted in a collaboration that lasted only continue the old one. I took my own Cinematography Gyula Pados for fourteen films. His work was steps. No one else did. And I remained Editor Hajnal Sello recognized when Svabo’s 1980 film honest in the end to my given fate. . . . Production Designer Tibor Lazar Mephisto was nominated for a best Why can’t you see that if there is such a foreign language film Oscar. thing as fate, then there is no freedom? Recognised by other directors, If, on the other hand…there is freedom, Koltai came to America and worked then there is no fate. That is…we on such films as Max (2002) When a ourselves are fate.” Man Loves a Woman (1994), Wrestling (Fateless pp. 188-189). Ernest Hemingway (1993) and White Palace (1990). He divides his time Synopsis between Europe and America and most The story of Fateless begins with the recently received an Academy Award removal of a young boy - Gyuri Köves cinematography nomination for the - from his family and home in Budapest Italian film Malena (2002) in 1944. He is deported by train to His second film as a director is the concentration camps at Auschwitz Evening which features Meryl Streep (Poland) and then to Buchenwald and Toni Collette and will be released (Germany). Close to death on several this year. occasions he barely survives the hard labour and inhuman conditions of the Writer Imre Kertész camp. He is liberated by American At the age of 14, Imre Kertész was troops in 1945, one of whom advises deported with other Hungarian Jews the now barely recognisable boy, not during World War II to Auschwitz to return home to Hungry but to and then Buchenwald, from which he escape to the USA, go to college and was liberated in May 1945. Returning try to make a new life for himself. to Hungary, he worked as a journalist The boy however decides to go back for the newspaper Világosság but was to Budapest where he is met with a dismissed and turned to translation mixture of indifference, hostility and as a means of supporting himself. curiosity. Despite the horror of his Kertész is best known for his first experiences he is strangely unable novel, Sorstalanság (Fateless), which he to satisfy people’s expectations of completed in the mid-1960s but was his suffering.
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Historical Context 1942. Although a subsequent request and work under a beech tree. It was The Holocaust and Hungary was refused, and the majority of the this place which was chosen by the The film deals with a small story Jewish population believed they had Nazis to establish the concentration from one of the most disturbing and escaped the fate of their fellow Jews in camp of Buchenwald (Beech Wood) distasteful events of human history; Poland and elsewhere, this process was • The gates of the concentration camp the ‘Holocaust’. The Holocaust is the greatly enlarged upon with the invasion bore the inscription: Jedem das Seine name applied to the massive, highly and defeat of Hungary by the Nazis in (“To each according to his merits”) organised ‘ethnic cleansing’ or genocide 1944. By the end of June that year half of • Between July 1937 and April 1945, of minority groups by Germany’s ruling all Hungary’s Jews (who had numbered approximately 250,000 people were Nazi party from 1939 until its defeat in 825,000) were deported to Auschwitz. incarcerated in Buchenwald by the 1945. By far the biggest group targeted The pro Nazi government who took Nazi regime. The number of deaths by the Nazis were the Jews; some 6 control continued to persecute and is estimated at 56,000. million Jews from Germany, Poland execute Jews until the end of the war, by • Many thousands of Jews arrived and other conquered territories were which time 564,500 Hungarian Jews had at Buchenwald from Hungary and executed during this time. Including been sent to their deaths. various eastern camps in 1944 and all the minority groups and individuals 1945. Most had been evacuated by killed under the Nazi regime brings the The Concentration camp at railroad from Auschwitz and other total figure to between 9 and 11 million Buchenwald camps threatened by the advancing – considerably more than twice the • Weimar is a famous German town Red Army. population of Ireland. known for centuries for its cultural • American soldiers liberated the The Hungarian government had life. Goethe, Schiller, Franz Liszt, camp and its remaining 21,000 begun deporting Jews on the request and Bach lived in Weimar. Goethe inmates (including 900 children) on of the German government as early as used to climb the Ettersberg and sit April 11th, 1945.
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That is, hope beyond the immediate horror of what is happening to the Jews for no comprehensible reason exists at this time. It must be understood, he proposes, as some part of God’s great plan because it cannot be explained otherwise. Gyuri neither accepts nor denies this interpretation. He is a Jew who does not speak Hebrew; he cannot pray in the language of his God. He remains passive; unmoved; neither heroic not victimized. He is sent to the camps for being Jewish, yet it is not a religion he feels a strong sense of connection to. What does it mean to be Jewish? Why should it mark him out to be sent away? This sense of distance and naivety is central to the character of Gyuri. When he is first arrested by the policeman and later encouraged to ‘escape’ he shows no emotion; no sense of really understanding his situation. He is borne on the tide of history; confused about whether he can or should escape. There is a touching scene where the boys lie about their ages so that they can work. When the German officer believes Gyuri’s lie he is delighted; he has passed a test he does not yet suspect the meaning of. The boy in him Story Coming of Age extreme circumstances imaginable. It clings to the adventure. The film begins with an image of a happy, begins with a warning from his uncles Later he will decide to accept what healthy teenager, on his way home. “I that his carefree days are behind him. he calls ‘the secret’ of his universe, didn’t go to school today,” he tells us They have no idea of the irony of their that anything can happen at any time, simply. Spying from behind a partition words. His move from childhood to including death. he sees his father and step-mother manhood will be swift and savage. in conversation with a businessman Central to their advice is the issue Story In the Camps with whom they are trading jewellery of Gyuri’s religion; his identity and his Fateless is unusual in the way it renders in return for assistance. His father, Jewishness are indivisible. At a sad ‘last the experience of the camps. It does following the increased pressure on Jews supper’ for Gyorgy’s father, his uncle not try to communicate their horror since the German invasion of Hungary, is tells him that he is “part of the common in some objective way; showing us, about to be sent to a labour camp. Gyuri Jewish fate.” What does that mean? sickening us. To be sure the horror is would rather play cards with the pretty For the uncle it means “a millennium there but it is available to us through girl upstairs. This is our introduction of continuing persecution” doled out the point of view of Gyuri; coloured to the story’s hero; a dreamy boy who by God in reprisal for the sins of our by his dimming consciousness. It gives will soon be exposed to the harshest of ancestors.” In short, the uncle is saying an other-worldly quality to a good human experiences. that the inescapable fate of the Jews, as deal of the action; an almost poetic The centrality of so young a figure God’s chosen people, is suffering. distance. As he becomes hungrier and in the story makes Fateless a kind of In a paradoxical sense this gives the more exhausted the camp is shown in ‘coming-of-age’ tale; albeit in the most uncle, a religious believer, some hope. shorter, less complete ‘impressions’
freshfilmfestival Fateless that are virtually wordless. A number image that is both specific to the setting suspicious. A knock on the door will of scenes at the centre of the film and universal in its implications. never be the same again. Who is this? powerfully convey his diminished Next; Gyuri is tossed onto the Bandi is not here. “Come back later”, humanity and loss of perspective. back of a cart carrying naked and his mother tells him, more in hope than The first is a strange, only half twisted bodies. Once again the distance conviction. What happened to Bandi? explained scene where the prisoners between life and death is narrowed to Did his discipline spare him? We never are standing out in a courtyard. Why so fine a difference that we are not sure find out. As the mother calls after are they here? Has someone escaped? what we are looking at. What’s going Gyuri, he simply walks away. He has no It is not made clear. In a half light; on here? Is he being taken to the gas interest in talking about the camps. somewhere between dark and light, in chambers? He sees the world upside Finally he reaches home. After the glistening mud the prisoners stand. down; a powerful visual equivalent for discovering his family apartment now Barely. Until morning? For an eternity. the capricious, inexplicable nature of belongs to someone else – as if he Their vertically striped uniforms seem this parallel world he lives in. In fact he had ceased to exist – he discovers to blow in a breeze like reeds, but is taken to the infamous showers; but old Jewish neighbours are still living they sway from pitiful weakness and they turn out to be only that, showers. down the hall. They are delighted to exhaustion. One is continually on the What is remarkable about these see him and want to know all about verge of breaking; that is of falling over. and other scenes in the camp is how it. But again he disappoints them; no He steadies. Another finally falls - a dull much is left to our imagination. They it is not like hell because hell doesn’t thump on the muddy earth. Dead? begin after the action has commenced exist whereas the camps do. They send In the next scene, sometime later, and conclude with often unresolved him off in search of his mother; he has Gyuri’s only friend Bandi Citron gives meanings. The story telling is linear, but made a vague insinuation that they, and out to him for not washing and taking not consecutive. others, simply sat idly by when he and care of himself. Bandi is something of others were deported. It didn’t have an older brother to Gyuri. A veteran Story Return to Budapest to be the way it was. There is no fate, of the Ukraine prisoner of war camps On returning to Budapest Gyuri has only choice. This is uncomfortable he preaches self-discipline and order three encounters which show us how for these two old men who have as the way to survive. A strong spirit he has changed: on the bus; looking for trouble remembering the name of the cultivates a strong body: “self-esteem Bandi Citron and finally reaching his concentration camp where his father is more important than bread and old apartment building, meeting with died, or his mother’s new husband. soup,” because having a will to live is his ‘uncles’. They’d sooner deal in generalities. an advantage over those who have Refusing his ‘fate’ once more, Gyuri As he walks away from the building surrendered to their fate. But though walks away from the train he and other to search for his mother and begin he tried hard to practice the advice at prisoners are being directed towards his future, Gyuri is reminded of the first, now the younger boy is beginning (in comparison with the train he concentration camp. It is the time of day to break down. “I am cold,” is all he can innocently boarded earlier with a Jewish he liked there most; the time between manage. Bandi stops yelling, and slips his crowd). We are stuck by his presence work and the night-time roll call, when own jacket over the boy. Gyuri is losing in a city where life has simply continued the prisoners would congregate, talk, the fight, exhausted, and in crippling mostly unchanged while he was in the and console each other. It is a strange pain from an infection which has set concentration camp. He still wears his and unsettling admission. into his knee. prison uniform jacket and yet a woman In a short wordless scene we see on the bus ignores him while a well- Narrating the Holocaust an emaciated Gyuri sitting on a heap fed and officious conductor harangues Representing the of rubbish during a break from work. him for a ticket. After all he has been ‘Un-Representable’ He has a ghostly pallor. He stares at through! A kinder man pays his fare Claude Lanzmann, who made the a well-fed German officer hungrily and asks him about the camps. But thirteen hour documentary ‘Shoah’ has gulping his lunch. These humans sit near Gyuri will not declare his experience as said, “Fiction [about the Holocaust] is each other but live in different worlds. extreme or unimaginable; to the man’s a transgression. I deeply believe that Unconsciously, he begins to imitate the disappointment. What does he feel on there are some things that cannot and officer’s munching; eating vicariously. his safe return to Budapest? ‘Hatred’. should not be represented.” The German senses the boy’s intense It is to Bandi Citron’s house he Lanzmann’s monumental film was a stare and turns away from him. It is an first goes. His relatives are afraid and series of interviews with survivors of the
freshfilmfestival Fateless camps. The horror of their experiences, slowly drains away from the images wanted to produce a showier fiction. the depravity of their circumstances, the as it drains from his face and life. This For example, I might have tried to inhumanity of the Nazi’s was, in his mind, section of the film is mostly grey/blue, break up time in my novel, and narrate impossible to re-present (represent). almost monochromatic, suggesting cold only the most powerful scenes. But the Why? Because all representations would and death. hero of my novel does not live his own be an approximation, a fictional telling The film makes no use of flashbacks time in the concentration camps, for of something so serious, that it could or archive footage. Unusually, it was neither his time nor his language, not not be properly imagined. But more shot chronologically, with the director even his own person, is really his. He than that. By re-creating or creating following the journey of the central doesn’t remember; he exists. So he has a story around the Holocaust, a film character as it was evolving. This to languish, poor boy, in the dreary trap maker could claim to understand what is uncommon in a film of this scale of linearity, and cannot shake off the happened in some way; could have where scenes would be shot ‘out of painful details. Instead of a spectacular some mastery over its horror. For sequence’ to save time and effort. Thus, series of great and tragic moments, he Lanzmann this would be an intolerable for example, the scenes in Budapest has to live through everything, which is arrogance; an insult to those who at the family home would ordinarily oppressive and offers little variety, like actually experienced the camps. Finally, be shot together, back-to-back. Here life itself. a representation would take away the director chose not to do this in But the method led to remarkable the primacy of the memory of the order to maintain the truth of the insights. Linearity demanded that each survivors and the imagination required performances. situation that arose be completely filled by those who came afterwards; us, The film opens and closes with a out. It did not allow me, say, to skip the audience. It would make us lazy variation on the same image; as he cavalierly over twenty minutes of time, consumers of yet more images; shocking walks across a square in Budapest he if only because those twenty minutes perhaps, but no different from all the smoothes down his billowing coat; were there before me, like a gaping, many images we see on TV and film. there’s a yellow star pinned to his lapel terrifying black hole, like a mass grave. He rebels at playing the role of the I am speaking of the twenty minutes Style victim and says, “there is nothing too spent on the arrival platform of the Fateless shares obvious similarities in unimaginable to endure”. When asked Birkenau extermination camp - the time setting and theme with the growing about the atrocities, he talks of his it took people clambering down from number of films set in concentration happiness. “The next time I am asked”, the train to reach the officer doing the camps during World War II. Perhaps he says, “I ought to speak about that, selecting. the best known of such films is the happiness of the concentration [. . . ] I came upon a series of Schindlers’ List, along with The Pianist. camp. If indeed I am asked. And photographs of human cargo arriving (see list below) provided I myself don’t forget” at the Birkenau railroad platform - The film is told in series of episodes; photographs taken by an SS soldier and fragments which become less coherent, Imre Kertész on the found by American soldiers in a former mirroring the growing blurring of the writing of Fateless SS barracks in the already liberated boy’s consciousness. The camera fades “If I look back now and size up honestly camp at Dachau. I looked at these out; the moment is gone but its trace the situation I was in at the time [living photographs in utter amazement. remains. Often the scenes are more in post-war Communist Hungary], I I saw lovely, smiling women and visual than narrative. Their meaning have to conclude that in the West, in a bright-eyed young men, all of them is more poetic than literal. This is free society, I probably would not have well-intentioned, eager to cooperate. particularly true of the scenes towards been able to write the novel known by Now I understood how and why those the end of the film where Gyuri is readers today as ‘Fateless’ the novel humiliating twenty minutes of idleness beginning to lose consciousness. singled out by the Swedish Academy for and helplessness faded from their Along with editing and pace, the highest honor. memories. And when I thought how colour plays an important role in No, I probably would have aimed all this was repeated the same way for creating mood and atmosphere. The at something different. Which is not to days, weeks, months and years on end, early and late scenes set in Budapest say that I would not have tried to get I gained an insight into the mechanism are sepia-toned, warm and comfortable at the truth, but perhaps at a different of horror; I learned how it became suggestive of sunlight. By contrast, once kind of truth. In the free marketplace possible to turn human nature against Gyuri arrives in Auschwitz the colour of books and ideas, I, too, might have one’s own life.
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[. . . ] Now the only thing to reflect The Pianist (2003) Night and Fog (1955) on is where we go from here. The A brilliant pianist, a Polish Jew, Filmed in 1955 at the post-war site of problem of Auschwitz is not whether witnesses the restrictions Nazis place Auschwitz, the film combines colour to draw a line under it, as it were; on Jews in the Polish capital, from footage with black and white newsreels whether to preserve its memory or restricted access to the building of and stills to tell the story of not just slip it into the appropriate pigeonhole the Warsaw ghetto. As his family only the Holocaust, but the horror of of history; whether to erect a is rounded up to be shipped off to man’s brutal inhumanity. monument to the murdered millions, the Nazi labour camps, he escapes and if so, what kind. The real problem deportation and eludes capture by living Good Evening Mr Wallenberg (1990) with Auschwitz is that it happened, and in the ruins of Warsaw. Raoul Wallenberg travels to German- this cannot be altered - not with the occupied Budapest during WWII in best, or worst, will in the world.” Survivors of the Holocaust (1996) order to effectively intervene in the fate Extracts taken from Imre Documentary blends personal accounts of trapped Hungarian Jews, by providing Kertész’s lecture accepting The of what happened before, during and them with safe passage to Sweden. Nobel Prize in Literature 20021 after WWII. Judgment at Nuremberg (1961) Films on the Holocaust The Last Days (1998) In 1948, an American court in Europa Europa (1991) Five Jewish Hungarians, now U.S. citizens, occupied Germany tries four Nazi A Jewish boy separated from his family tell their stories: before March, 1944, judges for war crimes. in the early days of WWII poses as a when Nazis began to exterminate German orphan and is taken into the Hungarian Jews, months in concentration Further Information heart of the Nazi world as a ‘war hero’ camps, and visiting childhood homes Holocaust Encyclopaedia and eventually becomes a Hitler Youth. more than 50 years later. http://www.ushmm.org/wlc/en/ A list of Holocaust-related sites Life Is Beautiful (1998) Schindler’s List (1993) http://www.mtholyoke.edu/acad/intrel/ A Jewish man has a wonderful romance Oskar Schindler uses Jews to start a holocaus.htm with the help of his humour, but must factory in Poland during the war. He Nazi concentration camp badges use that same quality to protect his son witnesses the horrors endured by the http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nazi_ in a Nazi death camp. Jews, and starts to save them. concentration_camp_badges
1 http://nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/literature/laureates/2002/kertesz-lecture.html
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