Treasure (2024)

Treasure
Treasure

Lily Brett, an Australian novelist and essayist, has parents who went through the holocaust and frequently writes about that topic or condition. Her 2001 novel titled Too Many Men is about a father and daughter traveling to Poland to learn about the father’s sad history. Another of the book’s many characteristics is that the daughter imagines what she would say to the ghost of Auschwitz commandant Rudolph Hoess. That’s right, the Rudolph Hoess, or Hoss, actually existed and was the main character last year in the controversial Jonathan Glazer’s “The Zone of Interest.”

When it came to filming her version of Brett’s book, director and co-writer (with John Questor) Julia von Heinz chose to exclude the Hoss material, perhaps not so wisely, but what she manages to come up with instead is even more awful. As if you cared about how old these characters are, the action of the movie, which could be labeled as a father-daughter trek is set in the year 1991, and hence the characters are that old. The film stars Dunham as Ruth Rothwax, who is a former New York journalist now deeply pre-occupied with the guilt of being overweight, dreams that she makes poor food by bringing her own plastic containers while traveling, and discontent with her father Edek who is a Polish Jew played by Stephen Fry. Ruth sits perpetually on the edge because, among other things, she doubts that Edek is serious enough when they try to research the scope of his traumatic history together. Ruth is also quite insistent that everyone around her understand and speak English, which is a rather obnoxious trait of American tourists, and is somehow even worse when it is gratingly reiterated throughout a movie.

Did I say narrative?”Treasure” has so much humor and emotional conveying at the cost of the story. Things do happen, of course: In Lodz, where Edek spent his childhood before being whisked away with his parents to the concentration camp in Auschwitz, the house where he lived is now inhabited by an impoverished family who appears to have lived there since 1940 and still owns fine china that belonged to the Rothwaks. Ruth, for one, wants to reclaim it, and Edek, for one, wishes it to be lost.

Then, there is the question of Auschwitz itself. Will Edek accompany Ruth when she visits the concentration camp, which other Poles they meet refer to as a “museum” provoking a very angry response from Ruth, or not? This is one of many disagreements that can be called a source of contention.

People familiar with trauma understand why some victims choose to remain silent about their pain it’s a touchy subject. Ruth is definitely not one of those people. All Ruth can do as she sits in a hotel room binge-watching Nazi history is curse her father’s silence and eat less than normal. While Edek enjoys a drink with some old ladies, Ruth is in a foul mood, because after a year since his wife’s death, Ruth can’t imagine the idea of her father finding company in his current state.

This is a perplexing film. Its tempo is dull, its design is skewed, and even though Dunham and Fry are both excellent actors, the two Perkins in the audience and on the screen are difficult for them to fully shed. Still, Ewa’s father’s character is annoying but interesting when he is intrusive in Ruth’s business or when she is too curious during her brief bargain with the occupants of the house over their tea sets. Koch’s concentration camp sequence is remarkably improved. Almost enough that you begin to think that the venerated resolution is worth forgiving.

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