Fateless, directed by Lajos Koltai, is based on Nobel laureate Imre Kertész's 1975 autobiographical novel Sorstalanság (the Hungarian title of the film) about a Hungarian Jewish boy, György Köves (played by Marcell Nagy) who at the age of fourteen is sent to the Nazi labor camp Zeitz, experiences the horrors, and survives wanting to talk about the good aspects of the experience. His year of horrors include the irrational roundup, stark relocation, abusive treatment by Nazis, hard labor, living on the edge of starvation, the filth, dead bodies piled up, gruesome physical conditions of the inmates, and György's gangrenous knee with lice feeding on his blood. What's the good in all that? Rather than comedic fiction, as in Life Is Beautiful (1997), György treasures memories of Budapest, is helped by such fellow inmates as Bandi Citrom (played by Áron Dimény), and receives compassionate care from a German medic, while providing a clue to his inner serenity with placid voiceovers. Most of all, what he learns from fellow inmates is that Jewish people have an extraordinary resilience and self-esteem based on thousands of years of persecution which help to transcend harsh treatment on the part of those who supported a Nazi regime that was in part a response to only a decade-long economic downturn. MH
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