DVD: A More Personal Holocaust Film

Fateless (5/5 stars)

This is a different sort of holocaust movie than most I've seen. There's not very much graphic extreme violence, evil Nazis, or most of the other things you normally see in these kinds of movies. This isn't to say that it still isn't extremely disturbing, as we seen the concentration camp experience and suffering through the eyes of a young boy who is shuttled through various camps until his eventual release at the end of the war.

What's so sad about the story is that no matter how much worse things get for the main character, he seems to accept everything as perfectly normal. All the while people who surround him cling to false hope that things will get better; even though they seem to have a more realistic grasp on the horror of the situation than the boy, it is he who does not understand who holds no hope and expects nothing. We see desperate people resort to evil measures; in the camps, some become profiteers taking advantage of other inmates while selling food. This angers some, but he sees it as natural and even particpates while others are indignant. After the war, one person is discovered to have helped the SS and everyone present wants to commit acts of revenge, while he is more concerned about his injured leg. On the way home, he is caught on a train without a ticket and almost gets thrown off. He is perfectly willing to accept this but a generous and angry person intervenes on his behalf and buys him a ticket.

After getting out of the camps, he is given the choice by liberating troops to travel to Switzerland or Sweden instead of his home in Hungary. He will have a better life there, they say. But he is determined to get home and discover the fate of his family that was left behind when he was grabbed off of a bus that one fateful day. He refuses and goes home anyway, only to find that he is a reminder to his family about the horrors of the war. He refuses to even acknowledge his own experiences for what they are, but still he is a reminder of a period of time that people close to him want to forget; because of this they do not accept him when he returns, and he is essentially left on his own.

The interesting perspective of the main character and the different way his story is portrayed than in most movies is reason to see this alone, but the directing, cinematography, and score are all simply fantastic. This is simply a beautiful, yet horrifying film that one should not miss.