| Fateless |
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| Director: Lajos Koltai |
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| Co-production: Hungary,Israel,Germany, UK |
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| Music: Ennio Morricone |
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| Actors: Marcell nagy, Janos Ban, Judit Schell |
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The opportunity the main character, György Köves’s figure and age offers, his point of view and level of perception – which is not necessarily low in case of a 14-year-old boy – determines what we see and how we see in this film. The nature of his point of view gets important, i.e. what he sees and marks off from reality. His visions are sometimes shocking and documentary-like, sometimes they are just defined observations imbued with his affection and perpetual drive to understand.
These are the underlined images of a peculiar world; pictures observed by the Boy: the camp’s description and its distinction from other camps. Streaming moods take over: the important distinction between sunrise and sunset, the snow-white depiction of fear and the cold; smells, memories and reflections; all inseparable from the camp. This constantly present point of view sometimes withdraws to yield the story and lets the theme make its way to get closer to the viewers.
The indescribable is inside, only the Boy, to whom it happened, can be followed. We silently follow him on his path with gentle loving care and dignity. Sometimes we share his point of view, sometimes we let him go and watch him from a distance, never with cold objectivity but with solicitous care and affection.
At the beginning of the film I would show what rarely has been shown: the happenings prior to the journey leading to the camps – the wry ceremonies in the family. The suffering man becomes like an object passed from hand to hand; all the others take something out or away while playing their own part, emphasizing their importance in the capacity of the ones who stayed, the survivors who got away, the perplexed advisors.
Sentences, needless intrusions, anxious eyes, unfinished and clumsy movements, fragile, slightly obscure mosaic-like stills seen in a mirror – the family. Statues of the eternal departed and the eternal remained behind. Objects of the era gain unique importance at this point; features of the so-called civic life: doors, glasses, mirrors, chandeliers, and the faces hidden behind these objects.
The film style and visual approach must take those images into account which we already have in our mind, the experience and knowledge the average viewer has on this period. For most of the people the pictures of the Holocaust are known from the archive documentaries. These images are always black and white or at least colorless. Our film must be faithful to this concept, as only this range of colors that infiltrated our mind can transmit the message in a realistic way by reinforcing the pictures already known from the documentaries. Otherwise we would diminish the power of the so-called realistic image.
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