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'Fateless' is a relentless, harrowing film

Just when you thought there wasn't anything anyone could say about the Holocaust that hasn't been said many times before, along comes the stunning picture "Fateless."

Based on Imre Kertész's semi-autobiographical novel about the years he spent being shunted from one concentration camp to the next during World War II, the drama is, in its way, more powerful than "Schindler's List" with its adamant cataloging of the daily horrors endured by victims of Hitler's Final Solution. It makes "Life Is Beautiful" seem appallingly shallow.

ThinkFilm 'Fateless' A- The verdict: A harrowing, must-see Holocaust film. Director: Lajos Koltai Starring: Marcell Nagy, Bela Dora, Balint Pentek, Aron Dimeny, Peter Fancsikai, Zsolt Der, Andras M. Kecskes, Dani Szabo, Tibor Mertz, Peter Vida Run time: 136 minutes Release date: Jan. 6, 2006 Rating: Not rated, but there are very disturbing concentration camp scenes. Language: Hungarian, English and German, with subtitles. See showtimes On the web Official movie site View the trailer    Trailers require Quicktime Rate 'Fateless'   Go see it   Make it a matinee   Wait to rent   Don't bother Voter Limit: Once per Hour View Poll Results

"Fateless" begins in a civilized, not-quite-yet Nazi-ized Budapest, making the sight of well-dressed men and women sporting yellow Stars of David especially jarring. Hungarian Jews are still allowed to own businesses, go to schools, own pets. (Yes, that actually was a Nazi stricture.)

So it's worrisome when 14-year-old Gyuri's (Marcell Nagy, very strong) father, a professional man, is sent to a forced-labor camp. Only a few days later, Gyuri himself is ordered off a bus en route to the brickyard where he works. Along with other Jews, he's marched through the city — everyone else tries not to notice them — and into a cattle car. When the train finally stops, he peeks through a slat and barely makes out a word he's never seen before: "AU-SCH-WITZ."

Even the Jewish geography teacher jam-packed next to him has never heard of the place.

Luckily, fate moves Gyuri on to other camps where the crematoriums aren't stoked daily. Instead, the inmates are worked to death, starved to death or, occasionally, shot by a guard who's in a bad mood. The men are forced to stand shivering in the camp's chilly courtyard for hours to pay for one person's offense. A chunk of meat discovered in the carrot soup is regarded with wonder — and envy.

Then, the suddenness with which their ordeal is ended is almost comical. The loudspeaker simply blasts out the order to shut down the crematoriums and all SS personnel must evacuate immediately. In their stead are kind-hearted G.I.'s. who offer food, medicine and clothing. And some advice. Don't go back to Hungary, a sympathetic soldier (new 007 Daniel Craig, in an affecting cameo) tells Gyuri. Go to Sweden or Switzerland instead, where you'll be more welcome.

But the boy disregards his warning and discovers a different ordeal at home — one that's almost as shattering as the camps. The citizens of Budapest, Jew and non-Jew, would rather pretend the Holocaust never happened. Gyuri meets a denier — you never actually saw the gas chambers, a man keeps asking — even before he gets home. And when he does, he finds his relatives who rode out the war in relative comfort would rather not be confronted with this ragged, gaunt reminder of those who weren't so lucky.

One well-intentioned man, angry at his countrymen who turn their back on the penniless Gyuri, pays for the boy's train ticket. Being in the camps must have been dreadful, he says empathetically, to which the dead-eyed teen replies, "Depends on what you mean by dreadful."

Oddly, "Fateless" calls to mind "The Passion of the Christ" in that both films' relentlessness is a drawback artistically — it makes them feel unbalanced. Yet, at the same time, it is also crucial to their cumulative power. Sure, director Lajos Koltai could've easily cut 15-20 minutes out of the camp scenes. But then, if we can barely endure watching this for a couple of hours, the picture's essential question becomes more disturbing: How could these people endure living it for several years?

Many of the images in "Fateless" are familiar, but they're presented so unsparingly, so uncloaked by emotion, they become freshly potent. The death is in the details, you might say, and Koltai gives us plenty — whether it's Gyuri's "neglecting" to tell the guards the boy with whom he shares his cot has died (so he can get his share of gruel) or a woman putting on lipstick before she disembarks at Auschwitz.

When that initial handful of Jews culled from the buses are first sitting around, wondering what's going to happen to them, an indigent-looking little man says over and over he was merely going to visit his sick mother and if he'd missed the midday bus, things would be entirely different for him. Five minutes, he keeps repeating, and I wouldn't be here.

That's what "Fateless" captures so well — those five minutes that make all the difference, whether you're waiting for a bus or lined up next to a crematorium.

It's an astonishing thought.