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. freshfilmfestival Fateless 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. freshfilmfestival Fateless 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.