PLOT: Imre Kertesz' Nobel Prize winning novel is the basis for this film about an adolescent Hungarian Jew who tries to make sense of his experiences in German concentration camps.

"Which writer today is not a writer of the Holocaust? One does not have to choose the Holocaust as one's subject to detect the broken voice that has dominated modern European art for decades." - Imre Kertesz.

Fateless is a before-and-after Holocaust story about the fact that there is no "after" even for those who survived.

The film, based on Imre Kertesz' autobiographical novel, follows the experiences of a teenaged boy.

Gyuri Koves (Marcell Nagy) lives in Budapest. It's 1944, and like other Hungarian Jews, Gyuri and his family all must wear a gold star on their clothing in public. As the film opens, Gyuri is mildly inconvenienced by the fact that his father has been called up to go to a labour camp. Family and friends gather to say goodbye to father, who entrusts Gyuri to his stepmother rather than his real mother.

As his father hugs him goodbye, Gyuri considers the fact that one is meant to cry at such a parting. He is not a particularly religious boy, Gyuri, and like many teenagers he is not especially attached to his parents.

Before long, Gyuri is out of school and part of a war labour force. And after that, he is one of many sent away to various concentration camps. By lying about his age, Gyuri becomes part of a work force. He survives starvation and cruelty and worse, and eventually returns to Budapest, where he realizes that many people are hostile and unbelieving about what has happened to him. Even the sympathetic hope he'll just forget about it and move on.

But move on to what? His stepmother is remarried, someone else has taken over his home, his friends are indifferent or feel guilty, or both.

Fateless is a coming-of-age story about a child hoping to make sense of what he has lived through. At one point in the labour camp, Gyuri shows his bloody hands to one of the guards -- he is still enough of a child to think that someone will care and come to his aid.

The story follows the fate of several people around Gyuri; eventually, he makes friends with a prisoner (Aron Dimeny) who maintains hope and who teaches Gyuri to try to keep his self respect.

For a film about such a devastating subject, Fateless is a visual marvel, beautiful to look at in its child's-eye-view. This is not surprising, as the film is a directorial debut for cinematographer Lajos Koltai. The screenplay is by Nobel Prize winning author Kertesz.

Fateless is in German, Hungarian (with English subtitles) and English.

BOTTOM LINE: Well worth seeing.

(This film is rated PG)
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