In prison, a sunrise is still beautiful, even more so
Written: Oct 14 '06 (Updated Mar 13 '07)
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Product Rating:
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| Bang For The Buck |
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Pros: A moving and very human story. Beautiful cinematography. Makes you think.
Cons: none
The Bottom Line: I strongly recommend this to anyone who has the film Schindler's List on their personal top 100 film list
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| e2holmes's Full Review: Fateless |
Throughout most of WWII while Jews in German-occupied territories were being deported to camps in Poland, the then Hungarian leader, Prime Minister Miklos Kallay with the head of the military, Admiral Miklos Horthy, resisted requests by Germany to deport Hungarian Jews. Through 1942, 1943 and into early-1944, the ca 825,000 Hungarian Jews were relatively safe although Hungary was of course a German ally. After the fall of Stalingrad in February 1943, where Hungary suffered heavy losses, it became clear that Germany would lose the war. Prime Minister Kallay sought to negotiate a separate armistice with the Allies, and to stop this, Germany invaded Hungary on March 19, 1944. With Kallay out of the way and a German puppet installed, SS Colonel Adolf Eichmann quickly set up plans to deport the Hungarian Jews. Two months later on May 15, 1944, the deportations began and in the space of two months, ca 400,000 Jews were deported to camps, mainly Auschwitz. On July 8, 1944, Admiral Horthy halted the deportations in the face of threats of war crime trials from the Allies, dismissed the puppet government, and in August resumed armistice talks with the Soviet Union. In mid-October with negotiations in the final stages, Admiral Horthy was overthrown in a coup by the pro-German radically anti-Semitic Arrow Cross party. From November 1944 to February 13, 1945 when the Soviet Union liberated Budapest, the remaining Hungarian Jews, now mainly in Budapest, were subjected to a reign of terror and extermination. When all was said and done, 2/3 of Hungarian Jews were killed. This is the story of one boy who lived through this experience. He was deported in the Spring of 1944 and made it back home sometime in 1945.
Movies about the holocaust always make me hesitate. "Am I really in the mood for this?" is the invariable question I ask myself. Fateless is a movie set during the Holocaust although it did not seem to me to be about the Holocaust. Rather it is a movie about the most profound experience of the script writer's life, which was the year he spent in a concentration camp in Poland. It follows the script writer as a carefree boy of 14 in Budapest to getting rounded up and sent to a camp by pure bad luck through his year in the camp, and finally to his return home where he struggles with having been through this profound experience yet no one really can understand or wants to hear about it at all.
Different than many other films involving the Holocaust, the film did not seem to be making a statement. It was not trying to 'make me understand'. Rather it is an honest and personal story about what it meant to the writer to go through this experience. In this, it challenges our definition of the horror of the Holocaust, because that definition must somehow come to grips with… happiness. For the writer, happiness was the one free hour they had each day between end of work and lock-down in the barracks, an hour that not coincidentally coincided with dinner. This hour was happiness in a pure form. In that moment, it seemed he was saying, you are not thinking about the bigger picture -- that your happiness is an artificial result of the fact that you are being worked and starved to death. You are concerned with the here and the now, with your small spot of reality, and in that moment, he experienced intense happiness, the most intense happiness of his life. Also he experienced the profound bonding that can occur between people in impossibly difficult conditions. Again it occurs when they are faced with inhumanity, for example being forced to stand all day and night or being forced to watch a hanging, but nonetheless regardless of the reason, the reality is that profound bonding occurs in those moments. He experienced also true friendship and kindness in the camps – from fellow prisoners in the camp who reached out to help him. In some ways the film reminded me of the feelings that war veterans often try to convey -- the conflicting feeling that their experience was hell but at the same time was the most profound and bonding experience of their lives.
Fateless is a beautiful and honest movie that I strongly recommend to anyone who has the film Schindler's List on their personal top 100 film list. The writer is highly critical of Schindler's List, which he views as dishonest portrayal of the experience, a Hollywoodification of the experience, and a film that makes us view the people sent to the camps as caricatures rather than people. Nonetheless I think that if you vowed never to see Schindler's List or intend never to see it again, then Fateless probably isn't for you either.
EHolmes
http://sunnysidekitchen.blogspot.com
Recommended:
Yes
Movie Mood: Serious Movie
Viewing Method: Other
Worst Part of this Film: Nothing
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Epinions.com ID:
e2holmes
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Location: Seattle, WA
Reviews written: 21
Trusted by: 6 members
About Me:
I'm a biologist with an interest in political history, European history, and film.
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