Julia von Heinz’s biography should include a series of German television productions and short films created with the local audience in mind. However, the film wed Njegovic “And tomorrow the whole world” is described by, “the great debut of this 1936s liberalism Political thriller with loads of fascist youthful terrorists with enough gung ho spirit to win a Venice competition”. The triumph certainly raised the status of the concept which was in the director’s intervention for years, as she envisioned adapting Lily Brett’s semi autobiographical novel 2001’s Too Many Men that tackled the holistic view of the author’s family’s Auschwitz survivor’sbottom down” depicts a facet of reality that is Ottoman’s Other. Here it is stripped down to its original form and goes by the name “Treasure,” which does not only entertain in watching British filmmaker Lena Dunham and Stephen Fry’s father daughter spat, but also touches on matters of historical nature. The importance and the drive that defined hig six last motion picture are not really there; for three specific and excruciating sad three pain stories we see going on, it feels like as if it is pretty mild.
Although premiered in the Berlinale in an out of competition slot, the story of a depressive American journalist traveling with her troublesome Polish father to his former homeland is likely to appeal to some purveyors of arthouse when Bleecker Street releases it in the U.S. summer due to its pleasing stars and ever relevant themes. But the film “Treasure” has to be regarded as somewhat unlucky in that it has had the ‘bad luck’ of being released immediately after Eisenberg’s Searchlight acquired Sundance smash “A Real Pain” which tells of dash Polish American relatives bickering and bonding over a Polish Holocaust tour, in a much wittier and edgier manner. A film about the Holocaust tour surely should evoke vivid sense of place and time, but like Polish American relatives in the film, one feels that it is the year 1991 storytelling which appears outdated.
That milieu, in fact, may be “Treasure’s” greatest asset but also it has received critical acclaim because it is heartfelt and very human at its core. The film geography was created by Sobańska and Sławiński, a gifted Polish pair who collaborated with Pawel Pawlikowski on Ida and C z a d fik, and it is incredibly raw and evocative. It encapsulates the sense of devastation and an almost dim hope of getting up of a country emerging from under the Iron Curtain’s shackles. Euro style hotel lobbies infused with the aromas of tobacco offer western tourists a skin deep appeal while collapsing apartment blocks and rubble thickly scatter the streets. If Ruth Rothwax (Dunham), a native New Yorker who has been to her native land for the first time, had some slightly idealistic impressions that the moment she steps on Warsaw she would feel at home, she is quickly brought back to reality.
Edek (Fry) on the other hand is slightly less idealistic in regard to returning home. Deceptively adopting tough bravado, he seems to be quite cautious undersea. Ruth suggested going on the trip. She was interested in discovering her sense of self once again as she had recently gone through a divorce and lost her mother. Edek whom she thinks of in a rather endearing manner although the feeling is quite mutual was not required for this trip but he has offered to help as a guide. At the destination however, he shows no enthusiasm whatsoever for family places of interest on her schedule. Instead, he attempts to direct her towards the easiest, most inconsequential tourist spots such as the Chopin Museum, and repuding her rail tickets for a nice driven Mercedes with a friendly helper named Stefan (Zbigniew Zamachowski) behind the wheel.
Let the squabbling begin, punctuated by what appear to be long running grievances from either side: He is contemptuous of her eating habits, her uptight nature, and his uncontrolled need for chaos and crass sexual conversations leave her uneasy. It is hard not to see, in these two halfbaked versions, a sliver of a troubled father daughter bond that breathed life in Marten Ade’s Toni Erdmann, an absolutely impressive film which, incidentally, Dunham was supposed to write a remake of at one stage which was never made. However, as co writers Von Heinz with her spouse and frequent co writer John Quester, doesn’t delve that deeply into the primary conflict of ‘Treasure’. To the conflicts that aroused between Ruth and Edek there is such a generality that there is little to no personal detail or peculiarities of any significance, while the film does disregard the details of Ruth’s marriage that failed and the remnants of her more recent limpandaidal mother.
One does not need a psychoanalyst to realize that Edek is trying to shield himself from the unpleasant encounters dealing with his past, but Ruth for some reason does not get this idea quickly, until his suffering is finally released when they go to visit Auschwitz — this is the moment when the mildly retold sufferings of his own self become unbearable. As they board a golf cart for the purpose of touring the camp, Edek learns that since only these people have this right, other visitors walk around: “That’s something, at least,” he says dryly, and more of this dry understatement would go down well in the film.
Ruth as a character, is extremely confusing ranging from a discerning sense of creativity and being a more conventional character suffering from more control related insecurities. With a somewhat cruel touch, Dunham, who plays the title character, neglects to invite an overwhelming sympathy and instead allows profound rows of sorrow to accumulate beneath her irritable skin, but in this case, it is infuriating to watch her creative faults as a writer. Meanwhile Fry radiates a shaggy nakedness, although the blatantly performed strong Polish accent makes his casting in a film so obviously focused on cultural heritage and personal authenticity more of a nuisance than a plus. However, it is the Polish supporting actors behind the film who make the proceedings more pleasant as they seem to have these years of experience: Zamachowski, years on from his leading role in Krzysztof Kieslowski’s narrative in Three Colors White, has humour young demeanour and plays the part of the tough friend who observes the leads’ argumentative scenes from a distance, while Iwona Bielska is captivating yet endearingly shrewd as a one night stand who shows Edek that there are more layers to grief than initially meets the eye.
Also wholly amputated from Brett’s text is, however, the most confident invention of all: the spectral figure of Ruth’s Auschwitz commandant, Rudolf Höss, with whom she manages to have several strange and troubling dialogues. It is easy to see why some people thought this is an effect best left only to the page, although the book’s bizarre, disturbing juxtaposition of the past and the present, of concentrated evil and banal incompetence, of the factual and the metaphysical essence of history, made it quite distinct. Those tensions are finally what “Treasure” does not possess: a nice film with emotions but without the grain, the interesting touchras about which is why it is too emotive quite easily in the wrong direction.
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