Fateless - novel of a fateless

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Movie
German title Fateless - novel of a fateless
Original title Sorstalanság
Country of production Hungary , Germany ,
England
original language Hungarian , English ,
German , Yiddish ,
Hebrew , Polish
Publishing year 2005
length 140 minutes
Age rating FSK 12
Rod
Director Lajos Koltai
script Imre Kertész
production Péter Barbalics ,
Andras Hamori ,
Ildiko Kemeny ,
Jonathan Olsberg
music Ennio Morricone
camera Gyula Pados
cut Hajnal Sellõ
occupation

Fateless is the title of an international co-production, staged in 2005, based on the novel by the Nobel Prize winner Imre Kertész . Kertész wrote the script himself (2001; German step by step , 2002). The plot tells the odyssey of a Jewish boy through several German concentration camps. It is the directorial debut of the award-winning cameraman Lajos Koltai . The film was produced by the companies Cinema Soleil , EuroArts Entertainment , H2O Motion Pictures , Hungarian Motion Picture Ltd. , Magic Media Inc. and Renegade Films .

The film premiered on February 8, 2005 at the Hungarian Film Festival . In the same year Koltai's directorial work was invited to compete at the 55th Berlin International Film Festival . The regular theatrical release in Germany took place on June 2, 2005.

action

György is 14 years old and grows up with his father and stepmother in Budapest . One day his father met the same fate as many Jewish men - they were recruited as workers and deported to Nazi Germany. György now has to ensure the economic survival of the family and has to take the bus to a factory every day to work as a bricklayer. But one day the bus is stopped by a Hungarian gendarme who forces the Jewish passengers, including György, to get off the bus. The Jews are taken to a nearby horse stable. Within a few weeks, the prisoners were forced into cattle trucks and taken off to an unknown destination. György's first destination is a place called Auschwitz-Birkenau , where he makes himself two years older and in this way survives the selection . He and other boys of about the same age are first deported to the Buchenwald concentration camp and then to Zeitz . Here he met the prisoner Bandi Citrom, who was also from Hungary. A kind of friendship develops between the boy and the slightly older young man as they encourage each other to survive the concentration camp and hope to walk the streets of Budapest again. As a result of hard work in a paving factory, György's will to persevere is almost shattered. His knee becomes infected and he is sent to the infirmary. When the situation in Germany seemed increasingly hopeless, György, half dead, was brought back to Buchenwald in a transport. In the Buchenwald infirmary he experienced the liberation by the Americans. Finally György returns to Budapest. Here he learns that his father died in Mauthausen concentration camp and that his stepmother married a Hungarian in order to survive. When he tells those who stayed at home about his experiences in the camp, he encounters an insurmountable defense - apparently they prefer to keep their own, clichéd ideas.

As in the novel, it is essential that the meaning of the work is not limited to the literal plot. In an interview from 2005, Kertész emphasized: “We didn't want to make a Holocaust film.” For example, Kertész's early work notes on the novel suggest that the labor service is an allegory for Kertész's exemplary “work on oneself”. With this he distinguishes himself from the “functional people” typical of the time, who allow themselves to be guided ideologically and thus miss the “existential experience of their life” or remain “without their own fate”. As a writer, however, he sees himself as someone who tries to interpret his personal experiences on his own responsibility, ie “does not accept the language and the finished terms. In the beginning, I think he's just stupid, more stupid than all the others who understand everything immediately. Then he begins to write like someone who wants to recover from a serious illness and overcome his madness ”. The “work on oneself” is recognizable as a reference to Thomas Mann , the appropriation of personal fate in a process of recovery also points to Immanuel Kant's criticism of fatalism or “lazy reason”. The actual subject is therefore more of a philosophical than historical nature, which also makes the provocatively distant presentation understandable. Especially the provocative aesthetics of the film (which has been criticized a lot in the press) can cause the viewer to think further and possibly lead to the insight "that behind the offensive verbatim narrative there is another one that ultimately matters" .

Background information

With a production budget of 12 million US dollars , about 2.5 billion forints , Fateless is the most expensive feature film ever produced in Hungary. It is also the first Hungarian film to be shot in widescreen format . The film was shot exclusively in Hungary, including Budapest, Dunaújváros , Fót , Paks and Piliscsaba . Filming, which began in mid-December 2003, had to be interrupted in February 2004 because a producer left filming. It is only thanks to the Hungarian producer Andras Hamori that the film could continue to be shot from May 2004 and that the shooting could be brought to a conclusion at the end of June 2004. 4,000 boys were cast for the teenage lead before they met Marcell Nagy, who was only 13 years old when the film was set.

Imre Kertész was responsible for adapting the novel step by step (2001) after he did not like the scripts presented. Since the beginning of the film project in 2003, he has also been in close contact with the director Koltai, about which Kertész's diaries and an interview with Koltai provide information.

Reviews

With a few exceptions, the film was poorly received in the German-language feature articles. In an interview in 2005, Kertész explains that this “negative criticism” was “unexpected” for him. He was “not offended” by her, but could “not really understand” her: “In my opinion, it stems from the fact that the critics did not understand the entire film project. You always start from the novel. But the novel is linguistic, it has its own art. You can't just translate the language of the novel into another medium. ”One day after the film was presented at the Berlinale, he noted in his diary:“ Bad press. The joy of the German newspapers at finally being able to give me a kick. The closed season is over. Interesting how calmly I take it. Half as much hatred and incorrectness in Hungarian would have made me mad. "

Michael Kohler ( film-dienst ) noticed that Koltai understood his craft as a cameraman, but the material would have needed more. For the director, every episode is "little more than a film stage decorated with historical insignia, every location an arbitrary postcard of the unimaginable". The film was "unsuccessful".

The Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung described the Berlinale performance as "an infinitely sad event" . The film does not succeed in "arousing even a little empathy instead of just anger." The cinema images are shamefully banal, harmless. The film music by Ennio Morricone pulls “this misery dummy completely into the abyss” .

The world noted in their short review that the film proves that the novel cannot be made into a film. The closer György gets to the camp, the black and white the colors become, the more Koltai loses sight of perspective. The film is a "Hollywood Holocaust film" . The music of Ennio Morricone has been described as “unbearably emotional music” that borders on the “perverse” .

In his review of the Berlinale performance, Gerrit Bartels ( die tageszeitung ) pointed out the "threateningly kitschy" music of Morricone. Many of the characters from the concentration camps had “stereotypical characters that we know from other Holocaust films” - “the narrow-lipped German guard, the cute prisoner, the fighter's heart, etc.” Nevertheless, Bartels admired the color scheme of the film.

Iris Radisch ( Die Zeit ) described Fateless in her review of the German theatrical release as a “great concentration camp opera” . It is an "embarrassing film" . The actors would tend towards pathos. The “kitsch” begins in the concentration camp : “Here the film moves away from everything it wants to tell, the hero, his feelings, the people around him, and takes off in stylish panoramas, light installations, genre images, choreographies.” Non-professional actor Marcell Nagy cannot depict the character's ordeal.

Ekkehard Knörer accepted the "script" written by Kertész in his review of Jump Cut , but thought that the director Koltai should be "beaten up for what he did with 'Fateless'". Under his direction, a “film of kitschy beautiful pictures” was created, accompanied by “the indulgent elegiac music of Ennio Morricone , who has always set everything that came before him, from soft porn to the Holocaust. It all sounds similar. Thanks to Lajos Koltai, it now looks similar. "

American critics rated Fateless far more positively. AO Scott ( The New York Times ) emphasized the visual beauty of the film, which was also a bit "confusing" . Fateless has a "striking freshness" , Morricone's music is "bombastic" . Kevin Crust ( Los Angeles Times ) praised the film as an “excellent contribution to the Holocaust canon” . Koltai had created a "great painting of humanity" "in forced inhuman (...) structures" . The film is "not just another version of the same story" . Ann Hornaday ( The Washington Post ) noted that Fateless is an extraordinary film, a work of a few words, a wise, "visually elegant meditation" on vagabonding good and bad. The film was "composed and filmed meticulously" .

Awards

Nominations

Although the film was submitted by the Hungarian side as a candidate for the Oscar abroad for the 2006 awards , it did not make it among the nominees.

literature

  • Imre Kertész: A Fateless Novel ( Sorstalanság , 1975). Newly translated by Christina Viragh. Rowohlt, Berlin 1996, ISBN 3-499-22576-X .
  • Imre Kertész: step by step . Screenplay for the novel of a fateless man ( Sorstalanság. Filmforgatókönyv , 2001). Translated by Erich Berger. Suhrkamp, ​​Frankfurt am Main 2002, ISBN 3-518-12292-4 .
  • Imre Kertész: Galley Diary ( Gályanapló , 1992). Translated by Kristin Schwamm. Rowohlt, Berlin 1993, ISBN 3-499-22158-6 .
  • Imre Kertész: Last stop. Diaries 2001–2009. Translated by Kristin Schwamm. Rowohlt Verlag, Berlin 2013, ISBN 978-3-498-03562-4 .
  • Interview by Gerrit Bartels with Imre Kertész on the occasion of the presentation of Fateless at the Berlinale: The film is a pure work of art , in: taz , June 8, 2005 ( online at taz.de ).
  • Interview by Tamás Halász with Lajos Koltai about his collaboration with Kertész for Fateless : Building a Cathedral , in: Herend Herald 2003-15 (April 2003), pp. 30–32.
  • Interview by Elizabeth Nagy with Lajos Koltai: The value of sun rays , critic.de, May 30, 2005 ( online at critic.de ).
  • József Marx: Fateless - A Book of the Film. Lajos Koltai's film based on the novel by Nobel Laureate Imre Kertész. Vince Books, Budapest 2005, ISBN 963-9552-53-4 .
  • Bernhard Sarin: A life as articulation. The anthropological iconography of the writings of Imre Kertész. Universitätsverlag Potsdam, 2010, ISBN 978-3-86956-086-1 , pp. 146–148 (chapter on Fateless ); Lot on the terrace of the Kempinski. Fiction and reality in the work of Imre Kertész. BoD - Books on Demand, Norderstedt 2020, (illustrated edition) ISBN 978-3-7504-9474-9 , pp. 127–134 (chapter on Fateless ), pp. 304–305 (bibliographical documentation on film versions ).

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Company credits in the Internet Movie Database (accessed May 23, 2010).
  2. ↑ Release dates in the Internet Movie Database (accessed on May 23, 2010).
  3. ↑ Interview by Gerrit Bartels with Imre Kertész: The film is a pure work of art , taz , June 8, 2005.
  4. ↑ Imre Kertész: Galeerentagebuch , p. 9 (entry from 1963).
  5. ↑ Imre Kertész: Galeerentagebuch , p. 18 (entry from 1965).
  6. ^ Bernhard Sarin: A life as articulation. The anthropological iconography of the writings of Imre Kertész , p. 65 (fn. 147).
  7. ^ Bernhard Sarin: A life as articulation. The anthropological iconography of the writings of Imre Kertész , p. 82 (fn. 210).
  8. ^ Bernhard Sarin: A life as articulation. The anthropological iconography of the writings of Imre Kertész , p. 148 (fn. 441).
  9. ↑ Imre Kertész: Step by Step. Preface, p. 7.
  10. ↑ Imre Kertész: Last stop. Diaries 2001–2009 , passim.
  11. ↑ Interview by Tamás Halász with Koltai: Building a Cathedral , in: Herend Herald 2003-15 (April 2003), pp. 30–32; Quoted in excerpts in: Bernhard Sarin: A life as articulation. The anthropological iconography of the writings of Imre Kertész. Pp. 124, 146.
  12. ↑ See for example Hans-Jörg Rother: Knowledge sees with , in: Der Tagesspiegel , February 15, 2005 ( online at tagesspiegel.de ); Roberto Dzugan: Fateless - novel of a fateless person , critic.de, May 26, 2005 ( online at critic.de ).
  13. ↑ Interview by Gerrit Bartels with Imre Kertész: The film is a pure work of art , taz , June 8, 2005.
  14. ↑ Imre Kertész: Last stop. Diaries 2001–2009 , 342 (entry from June 6, 2005).
  15. ^ Film review by Michael Kohler in film-dienst 11/2005 (accessed via LexisNexis Wirtschaft ).
  16. ↑ Kertész film: With make-up and music in the warehouse at faz.net, February 16, 2005 (accessed on May 23, 2010).
  17. ↑ Terrible music, swinging sword at welt.de, February 16, 2005 (accessed on May 23, 2010).
  18. ↑ Bartels, Gerrit: Negating Hell at taz.de, February 16, 2005 (accessed on May 23, 2010).
  19. ↑ Iris Radisch: Great Concentration Camp Opera , zeit.de, June 2, 2005, copy on archive.org .
  20. ↑ Lajos Koltai: Fateless , review by Ekkehard Knörer on jump-cut.de (accessed on September 19, 2014).
  21. ↑ Scott, AO: Finding the Beauty in a Boy's Days of Horror . In: The New York Times, Jan. 6, 2006, Section E, p. 9.
  22. ^ Criticism ( memento of May 6, 2010 in the Internet Archive ) at calendarlive.com, January 27, 2006 (accessed on May 23, 2010).
  23. ↑ Hornaday, Ann: 'Fateless': Profound Portrait Of Unspeakable Anguish . In: The Washington Post, February 3, 2006, p. T43.