by SARAH ROWLAND

Fateless

Gyuri Köves is a 14-year-old Hungarian Jew who tries retreating to a quiet place in the back of his mind in order to survive the horrors of a German concentration camp. This detached meditation only carries him so far, though. He gets through stage one of starvation, back-breaking labour and the first crop of lice. But after his leg swells up with a painful infection, he can no longer daydream his way out of hell, and consequently starts to lose it.

Based on Imre Kertész’s 2002 Nobel Prize-winning novel about his personal experience in Auschwitz, Fateless leaves no grizzly detail unturned—including the moment Gyuri looks down at his rotting leg wound and discovers a family of maggots burrowing in his knee. Suffice to say, this scene is hard to watch—as are many in this extremely graphic account of the Holocaust.

However, it is not without its darkly beautiful moments. In one particular scene, where the Nazis make their prisoners stand up without sleep, food or water for 24 hours, director Lajos Koltai somehow turns a torture ritual into a cinematic poem. He does this by blasting a sweeping symphonic score and shooting from a bird’s eye POV—this way we see the curved backs of the striped prisoners swaying like unbreakable weeds against the foreboding grey sky. If one starts to waver, his inmates hold him up to spare a prison-guard beating.

In other words, like most WWII films, after being subjected to the ugliest side of mankind, Fateless rewards us with the most inspiring side of the human spirit. It also rewards us with the debonair Daniel Craig (future James Bond) in a bit part as an American soldier who is like a light at the end of a long and heavy viewing.

The Guests

If women over 40 think they have a hard time getting good roles in Hollywood, imagine what it’s like being an ultra-Orthodox thespian living in the pious projects of Jerusalem. It can’t be easy. Which could explain why The Guests is all the rage in the Israel filmmaking community. It is, after all, the first feature film produced by the devoutly religious set in collaboration with secular filmmakers.

The story revolves around Moshe and Malli, a married couple fallen on hard times. After five years of marriage, they still haven’t conceived (mind you, they don’t want children per se—they want “sons”). In addition to their fruitless union, they’re too broke to celebrate Succoth, one of the holiest of holy holidays in which Jews camp out and feast in temporary shacks to commemorate their Egyptian exodus. But after hours upon hours of loud and lively praying, they receive a Succoth miracle: a big chunk of change from a local charity organization.

This is around the same time two escaped convicts, who knew Moshe from his pre-Orthodox days, show up for dinner unannounced. Taking it as a test from God, Moshe and Malli endure unfathomably bad—not to mention unholy—table manners from their guests, who are quite clearly taking advantage of the naïve hosts.

Though The Guests was made with the intent of introducing Western audiences to the rituals and culture of ultra-religious Jews, there’s just a little too much God talk to realistically hold the interest of non-Orthodox viewers.

Fateless and The Guests open Friday, Jan. 27

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