June 13, 2024
FILM: TREASURE
DIRECTED BY: JULIA VON HEINZ
STARRING: LENA DUNHAM, STEPHEN FRY, ANDRE HENNICKE
RATING: 3 out of 4 stars
By Dan Pal
In the new film Treasure, Lena Dunham stars as New York journalist Ruth in 1991 who travels to Poland with her father Edek, played by Stephen Fry, to visit his childhood home. Edek and his Jewish family had been forced out of their residence in 1940. Several family members, including Edek, spent time in concentration camps. It is Ruth’s goal to find and photograph some of these personal and historical places. Edek’s reason for going is a bit less clear as he seems to have little interest in exploring the darker sides of his past than Ruth has. He initially acts as a bit of tour guide for her. As such, his lighter approach to the trip creates some distance with Ruth who is still reeling from her mother’s recent death.
Dunham plays Ruth in a cold, stoic manner. It’s a very contained performance for much of the film and does suggest that she is capable of a very focused character creation which is, for the most part, pretty distant from her previous roles (particularly in Girls.) There’s a maturity to her work here that can at times feel a bit one note but nevertheless is a much more internal and committed character role for her. Physically Dunham is much bigger than she’s been in a while yet Ruth seems to be earnest in caring for her health by jogging around town and becoming a vegetarian. It’s not clear exactly what this is saying about her character but does indicate she is determined and ambitious in her need for self-improvement.
Stephen Fry sports a Polish accent and does have the predictably lighter role but he demonstrates a softer and more emotional side than his previously used jovial presence on screen suggests. It’s a pretty impressive performance.
The film is shot on location in some of the more run-down parts of Warsaw and Krakow. Having been to Poland a couple of times myself I can attest to a much more developed country in the last thirty plus years than the time period in which this film is set. That makes the production all that much more impressive to experience. Director Julia von Heinz does an expert job at filming at abandoned factories and other settings that nicely capture the rough nature of Polish life in 1991. Large families are living in small homes that they fear will be taken from them by people like Edek who have a legitimate right to those properties. It’s also interesting to see how important money was to the locals at the time who could be bought for a very small amount. Edek and Ruth are given a lavish hotel suite and other such amenities by throwing an additional ten or twenty dollars at those in the service industry. First visiting the country ten years later myself I know how far a few extra dollars went at the time. (We ate like royalty in a couple of Warsaw restaurants for an amount that might have given us an average meal in the U.S.)
It’s hard to say exactly what von Heinz ultimately wanted to achieve with this film though. It is based on a true story and it does seem increasingly necessary to tell these stories as we get further and further away from the atrocities that occurred during this period of world history. There are not a lot of big emotional swings throughout the film keeping it tonally a bit flat but the two actors do offer some welcome humor and humanity at times and von Heinz does a masterful job of diving us into a period of Jewish and Poland history that in some regards they are still trying to recover from.
Treasure opens theatrically today.
FILM: TREASURE
DIRECTED BY: JULIA VON HEINZ
STARRING: LENA DUNHAM, STEPHEN FRY, ANDRE HENNICKE
RATING: 3 out of 4 stars
By Dan Pal
In the new film Treasure, Lena Dunham stars as New York journalist Ruth in 1991 who travels to Poland with her father Edek, played by Stephen Fry, to visit his childhood home. Edek and his Jewish family had been forced out of their residence in 1940. Several family members, including Edek, spent time in concentration camps. It is Ruth’s goal to find and photograph some of these personal and historical places. Edek’s reason for going is a bit less clear as he seems to have little interest in exploring the darker sides of his past than Ruth has. He initially acts as a bit of tour guide for her. As such, his lighter approach to the trip creates some distance with Ruth who is still reeling from her mother’s recent death.
Dunham plays Ruth in a cold, stoic manner. It’s a very contained performance for much of the film and does suggest that she is capable of a very focused character creation which is, for the most part, pretty distant from her previous roles (particularly in Girls.) There’s a maturity to her work here that can at times feel a bit one note but nevertheless is a much more internal and committed character role for her. Physically Dunham is much bigger than she’s been in a while yet Ruth seems to be earnest in caring for her health by jogging around town and becoming a vegetarian. It’s not clear exactly what this is saying about her character but does indicate she is determined and ambitious in her need for self-improvement.
Stephen Fry sports a Polish accent and does have the predictably lighter role but he demonstrates a softer and more emotional side than his previously used jovial presence on screen suggests. It’s a pretty impressive performance.
The film is shot on location in some of the more run-down parts of Warsaw and Krakow. Having been to Poland a couple of times myself I can attest to a much more developed country in the last thirty plus years than the time period in which this film is set. That makes the production all that much more impressive to experience. Director Julia von Heinz does an expert job at filming at abandoned factories and other settings that nicely capture the rough nature of Polish life in 1991. Large families are living in small homes that they fear will be taken from them by people like Edek who have a legitimate right to those properties. It’s also interesting to see how important money was to the locals at the time who could be bought for a very small amount. Edek and Ruth are given a lavish hotel suite and other such amenities by throwing an additional ten or twenty dollars at those in the service industry. First visiting the country ten years later myself I know how far a few extra dollars went at the time. (We ate like royalty in a couple of Warsaw restaurants for an amount that might have given us an average meal in the U.S.)
It’s hard to say exactly what von Heinz ultimately wanted to achieve with this film though. It is based on a true story and it does seem increasingly necessary to tell these stories as we get further and further away from the atrocities that occurred during this period of world history. There are not a lot of big emotional swings throughout the film keeping it tonally a bit flat but the two actors do offer some welcome humor and humanity at times and von Heinz does a masterful job of diving us into a period of Jewish and Poland history that in some regards they are still trying to recover from.
Treasure opens theatrically today.