‘Treasure’ Review – Aspiring Tearjerker Is A Flurry Of Shortcomings

For lack of a better way of putting it, the Holocaust is having a bit of an examinatorial moment. Jonathan Glazer’s The Zone of Interest received rave reviews out of festivals last year before hitting theaters in December, only to one-up its own critical appraisal by taking home two Oscars at this year’s Academy Awards. In January, Jesse Eisenberg’s A Real Pain premiered at the Sundance Film Festival; it follows two cousins (played by Eisenberg and Kieran Culkin) who go on what they dub a “Holocaust tour” through Poland in honor of their late grandmother, who narrowly survived Nazi occupation in the 1940s. Then in March, Bleecker Street released the Anthony Hopkins vehicle, One Life, a biopic of Nicholas Winton, the British humanitarian who attempted to help groups of Jewish children in German-occupied Czechoslovakia to flee the country just before the start of World War II. 

We now find ourselves in June, and somewhat curiously, Bleecker Street is back with yet another drama surrounding the impact the Holocaust had on its survivors, one that is far less by the book than One Life yet almost too similar to A Real Pain for comfort. (Good thing Searchlight got its hands on that one before Bleecker made a bid.) Though instead of cousins, Julia von Heinz’s Treasure – loosely adapted from Lily Brett’s autobiographical novel, “Too Many Men” – centers on a father-daughter duo in the 1990s – Ruth (Lena Dunham), an unhappy, divorced journalist from New York City, travels to Poland with her father, Edek (Stephen Fry), in hopes that she can finally make sense of her family’s clouded history. As if von Heinz and her co-writer John Quester weren’t sure where else their film’s main point of contention could possibly come from, they frame their bond as that of the bickering odd-couple variety, though Ruth is the primary instigator. She’s whiny, high-strung, and curt; Edek is a spirited old chap, even if his ebullience is a facade.

Of note: That it is a facade is evident to all in his purview, except for Ruth. When Edek twice balks at Ruth’s suggestion that they travel by train, she complains that she already purchased their tickets; his hesitation to take photographs in front of various landmarks or to go to any number of cities she had on her itinerary is met with irritation, for he invited himself along and is only disrupting her plans. Edek notes that he didn’t want his daughter to travel through Poland alone, but it slowly becomes clear that he really tagged along in an effort to further conceal the truth about the deep-seated traumas of his youth. 

Edek’s principle motivation when his and Ruth’s voyage begins is to further conceal his long-dormant pain by minimizing the severity of the wounds he endured during his childhood. When they visit his old apartment, they discover that the family now living there is still using his mother’s china, sitting on his old couch, and wearing some of the clothes they left behind. Ruth insists that they stay for tea, offering to buy the belongings from the family in order to help her father preserve some of the past he’s lost. 

Edek is visibly uncomfortable – he spends most of Treasure jostling back and forth between a peppy state and a solemn one – yet sets aside his anxiety for the sake of his daughter. When he shows the slightest bit of emotion, Ruth can’t bother to understand where it may be coming from, instead resorting to dismissive slights, one after another – “It’s just another jacket, remember?” she shouts late in the film after forcing his father’s old coat into his arms as he sobs, confronted with grief he’d long left to lie. 

Your mileage will vary in regards to this persistent tone, not solely because it takes Ruth well over an hour to come to her senses and offer a slew of apologies that her father deflects in order to protect his daughter’s feelings, but simply because it gets grating after a while. Dunham’s energy here is alarmingly similar to the exasperating zeal she brought to HBO’s Girls when it was all the rage throughout the 2010s. It’s a shame, given the range she’s at least attempted to prove herself capable of in recent works, namely her recent directorial efforts, Sharp Stick and Catherine Called Birdy. 

Fry suffers a similar fate as Edek, a man who seems to shift his emotional weight based on the flip of a coin. As a result of their roles, neither of which are nearly fleshed out enough to provide their fine performers with any room to work, Dunham and Fry’s performances are infuriatingly one-note. Then again, so is the film that surrounds them, down to its insistence on depicting post-Holocaust Europe as the forever-gray, dreary wasteland that Hollywood tends to insist upon these days. von Heniz appears to be as desperate to mine anguish from historical devastation as she is to have her film play as a touching father-daughter drama, an oil-and-water concoction that most filmmakers, let alone the hands attempting (and failing) to mix it together here, are incapable of working with.

In order for a movie so hell-bent on succeeding as a tearjerker to actually convince its audience to snivel, it has to give them a reason to connect to its narrative first. Treasure never provides us with that opportunity. Whether that’s because of awkward pacing or inharmonious writing – or both – is worth asking. But sometimes, a film’s ability to tug at your heartstrings can make up for its other shortcomings. This is no such movie. Sure, it possesses plenty of heart, but it’s nevertheless entirely incapable of conveying that heart when it matters most. Treasure’s characters may come together in the end, but the same can’t be said for the film itself.

Treasure is currently playing in select theaters courtesy of Bleecker Street.