Fateless (2006)

Plays out as a constant tug-of-war between what makes it trite and what makes it unique, although what makes it unique has the better chance of sticking with you.

Is the survivor entitled to ordinary human happiness -- or is this human emotion an act of disloyalty and diminution? These questions are a vital part of this outstanding film's dark and sombre power.

Perhaps the fault lies more with Ennio Morricone's lavish, emotionally bullying music, which cancels out all the reticence and nuance of the script.

Fiercely unsentimental and surprisingly beautiful, Hungarian drama Fateless does the seemingly impossible: it succeeds in portraying the subject of the Holocaust in a new and devastating light.

We're meant to see the camps with a naive adolescent eye, but director Koltai misjudges his material, and his fastidious paletting and highly orchestrated set-pieces are curiously low-impact; beautiful where they should be beastly.

Relatively few films touching on the Holocaust are worthy of their subject; this one is.

When Gyorgy speaks, like a junkie remembering his addiction, of 'the happiness of the camps,' the moment is far scarier than the images of pale corpses and hangman's nooses.

Lajos Koltai's.. textured re-creation of enduring the unimaginable with quiet delicacy is the most hauntingly beautiful film about the Holocaust ever made.

This is haunting because it's a look inside the concentration camps through the eyes of a child.