Fri., Jan. 6, 2006 12:00 AM PST
Looking for a fun movie to help cure those post-holiday blues? Um, this ain't it. Based on Imre Kertész's semi-autobiographical novel, this long,
bleak flick details a Hungarian Jewish teenager's experiences in German concentration camps. In 1944, Nazis take over Budapest, and 14-year-old Marcell Nagy loses his father to labor camps. Soon after, the kid is pulled off a bus and deported to Auschwitz and eventually Buchenwald, where he's worked and starved to near death.
After the war, Nagy discovers he can't really go home again, as his return is met with surprising ambivalence. Though beautifully photographed and convincingly acted,
Fateless suffers from inevitable comparisons to other, better Holocaust dramas. Yes, it effectively portrays the harrowing conditions and humiliations endured by prisoners, but Nagy isn't fully explored as a character. And the film's sluggish pace and episodic structure (with countless fade-ins and -outs) lessen its dramatic impact.
Fateless needs more focus.
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