Much-Hyped Holocaust Flick Faces Deadly Reviews

While Hungarians are apparently lining up to see Sorstalanság (Fateless), the movie based on the Nobel Prize-winning novel by Imre Kertész (in suit and tie in the photo to the left), the film is being panned by local reviewers and appears to face an uncertain fate in its battle to gain wide foreign release. Most of the criticism seems to be aimed at first-time director Lajos Koltai (right), who is accused of stumbling badly while making the jump from lowly cinematographer to auteur. We haven't seen the pic yet, and thus cannot give our opinion. Then again, you probably don't and shouldn't give a hoot what we think. Instead, we'll just give you a round-up of what some of the critics are saying.

• According to Magyar Hírlap, "a mediocre movie was made from an exceptional book." Digging the knife in a little deeper, they added that "a movie will not be good just because it shows nice pictures and plays nice music (Ennio Morricone) for nearly 2 hours and twenty minutes."
• Est.hu twisted the same knife by saying that "the shoemaker should stick to his last, the fisherman to his net and the cameraman to his camera."

Ouch! More fatefull reviews for "fateless" after the jump...

• Magyar Nemzet quoted all-purpose aesthete András Réz saying the same, but a bit more nicely: "This movie, I have to say, is a strange, mediocre work, in which Lajos Koltai - who is, by the way, endlessly honorable and invests a huge amount of energy - battles such a heavy literary material which, especially for a first-time director, is a burden larger than necessary."
• Gondola.hu wrote: "We did not leave the theater thinking we were given something new by Sorstalanság."
• Origo.hu's influential "Filmklub" stressed that the irony of the book is missing from the movie. "Also missing is Imre Kertész's personal example of and ability to interpret human suffering," which is a pretty bad thing to say about a movie about the Holocaust.
• While there has been praise for the young star of the film, Marcell Nagy, (center in the above pic) the acting has also come under fire. News presenter Antónia Erős was quoted by Blikk saying "the world of Koltai's pictures was enthralling, which was completed by Ennio Morricone's music. I found the verbal part of the movie somewhat weaker."
• Interestingly, perhaps the harshest review of the film we read was in the Budapest Sun, a paper you might expect to tread lightly on such a subject. "It is so upsetting that I am somewhat reluctant to bash it too forcefully," wrote Sun style fox Eszter Balázs. "[Let's] just forget it and keep the book instead."

All that said, Sorstalanság seems to be well-liked by movie-goers in Hungary, and looks like it may get a pass by some foreign critics. The Guardian wrote that the film "captured the imagination of festivalgoers" at the Berlin Film Festival, where it was given a last- minute slot. (It reportedly got in due to the decision by the festival's organizer's to yank another pic after its American star, Glenn Close, refused to show up and walk the red carpet.)

And the movie did get good notices from at least one influential Hungarian. "The movie added everything to the novel a good movie could add to a good novel," Kertész told hirado.hu.