USER REVIEWS:
Oracle 9A Strange tale that senses the mind, and the soul......
Grade: A-
The visual beauty of Lajos Koltai's "Fateless" is unmistakable, and also a bit disconcerting. After all, a movie about the holocaust is never happy. But the beauty inside "Fateless" comes from not the suffering, but the outstanding filmmaking.
"Fateless" is a strange tale that senses the mind, and the soul.
"Fateless", nominated for Best Foreign Film, provides a piece of the holocaust from the eyes of Gyuri(Marcell Nagy). Through the great eyes, and great pride this boy has, we see him fall, at more than 1 concentration camp. But he never stops acting with such a great talent, even when he falls.
In the camp, he finds kindness, in particular from a fellow Hungarian (Aron Dimeny). He also discovers that the ordinary course of life yields moments of pleasure. In his voice-over, he speaks of loving the hour of idleness between work and the nighttime roll call. He and the other inmates eat their vile rations not only with desperation, but with relish as well, when they discover a scrap of meat or a potato. The ability to wring such satisfactions from nearly absolute deprivation is one of the ways the prisoners hold on to their humanity.
When he returns to Budapest, he finds himself looking at nothing but ruins. Luckily, he finds old Family freinds, and from there the story is Straight-Forward.
But what makes these scenes in Budapest so eerily beautiful is the great camera movement and the narrative.
In One beautiful last shot, you find Gyuri walking to his mothers house, and as the camera zooms away, and Gyuri explaining the relativity of his experience, you find both fate, and hope clashed together.
-Oracle
This movie is available on DVD/Video