Soulful memory of death camp
Over the past decade, there has been an outpouring of films about the Holocaust, but Fateless — a haunting and unforgettable Hungarian movie at the Toronto film festival — is the ultimate statement on the subject. It goes where other Holocaust movies have not — into the soul of a 14- year- old boy who survived the Nazi death camps but did not feel like celebrating when he went home to Budapest at the end of World War II.
“ When I first read the novel by Imre Kertesz, I visualized the film,” says Lajos Koltai, the veteran Hungarian cinematographer who makes a stupendous directing debut with this film. “ This was a good sign because the most important moments in my life appear to me as films rich in detail.”
Koltai — a modest, silverhaired man in his late 50s — explained in an interview yesterday that people had been asking him for years when he was going to direct a movie. He had a stellar reputation as a cinematographer, based on decades of collaboration with Hungary’s most celebrated director, Istvan Szabo ( Mephisto, Sunshine).
Koltai knew the moment was right when Fateless came along. Six years ago a friend handed him the book. He read it while working on another film in Morocco.
“ Suddenly I knew this was it,” Koltai explained. He wanted to meet Kertesz — and luckily, the feeling was mutual. When a meeting was arranged, the novelist asked Koltai to read the script he and another writer were collaborating on.
Koltai gave his views that the story was linear, and had to be told chronologically, without any big emotional scene. Its meaning must emerge by going inside the head of its young hero and looking out.
“ That is exactly what I wrote,” said Kertesz. “I want you to make the film.” The book, based on its author’s life story, had been read by few people when it was published in 1975. But it was rediscovered by a Budapest critic a decade later, which led to the prospect of a movie. And while the movie was still struggling to reach the screen, Kertesz won the Nobel Prize in 2002.
In order to make the film, Koltai needed to build replicas of the camps. This is a big film that depends on the cumulative effect of many small details.