Fateless

Fateless is the name of a semi-autobiographical novel by Hungarian-Jewish writer Imre Kertesz, who won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2002, in large part on the basis of this book. It is also the name of a movie, produced in Hungarian in Hungary, scheduled to be released in the United States in January. The movie has been playing in Hungary to large audiences since February of this year, and has been shown at several film festivals, including the Washington Jewish Film Festival, where it was screened on Sunday night.

The story is of a 14 year old boy in Budapest in 1944, who is rounded up off a bus with a number of other Jewish men and shipped to Auschwitz. Told to say, when asked, that he is 16 (to be old enough for a work detail), he does, and winds up on work details at Buchenwald and other, smaller work camps. He is in these camps for over a year, holding himself together under obviously horrendous conditions, until he develops a severe knee infection that leaves him unable to stand, much less walk. By some chance event (which the real Kertesz still cannot explain), rather than being shot, he is carried to the Buchenwald hospital, where he is well cared for in a bed with a blanket and clean sheets, and where he gets real food. He is there a short time, when the camp is liberated. He chooses to go back to Budapest (now under Soviet control), and finds himself fairly alone (his father has been killed; his mother apparently survived, but he does not have a reunion with her during the film), wandering the streets, wondering what his future will bring. He is still in his camp clothes, he has no money, he feels an outsider in the city of his childhood, he even longs for the regularity and comeradery of the German work camps.

It is a harsh picture (although one wonders if the concentration camp scenes are all harsh enough). The director, Lajos Koltai, was in town and gave a very nice introduction to the film and its creation. As he said, when he finished his introduction: "The one thing I cannot say here is, 'sit back and enjoy the film. This is not a film to enjoy.'" The young actor who plays the lead, Marcell Nagy, is excellent in his first film role. The cast is all Hungarian. The musical score, by Italian composer Ennio Morricone, is haunting.

It will be very interesting to see the American public's reaction.