Berlinale 2024: Lena Dunham Goes on a Trip to Poland in ‘Treasure’
by Alex Billington
February 18, 2024
There’s yet another interesting set of twin films in 2024 – two films that are remarkably similar in so many ways even though they’re entirely independent, unrelated productions. The first film premiered at the 2024 Sundance Film Festival in January titled A Real Pain, written, directed by, and starring Jesse Eisenberg, and it won the Screenwriting Award at that festival (here’s my full review). The second film is premiering now at the 2024 Berlin Film Festival in February titled Treasure, directed by German filmmaker Julia von Heinz, and starring actors Stephen Fry & Lena Dunham as father & daughter. Both films involve Americans traveling to Poland, flying into Warsaw, from where they embark upon a “heritage” road trip tour around Poland to find an old home where someone they know once lived in many years ago before fleeing Poland. Both also feature annoying characters, jokes about tourists visiting Poland, and trips to a Jewish graveyard as well as a Nazi concentration camp. They’re both so similar it’s hard to not talk about both, even though this review is supposed to be about Treasure, I must compare them as stories about similar themes.
Treasure is based on a true story, based on an actual trip a woman and her dad took, and their experiences traveling to Poland just after the Iron Curtain came down. A Real Pain, however, is not based on a true story but it is inspired by Jesse Eisenberg’s own family and his experiences. His film is kind of the opposite – the making of his film became his real version of going back to Poland, as the house they go to and film at is the actual house his grandmother lived in years ago. In Treasure, the story’s core is about a man who actually went to and survived Auschwitz, and while he doesn’t want to dig up the past, his daughter does and so she takes him to Poland to see where his life was spent during that (harrowing) time. Both films have a more pensive, quiet, humble character trying to understand Poland’s past, next to a more annoying, loud, brash character who seems both interested in and uninterested in Poland’s past. It’s a complex dynamic – A Real Pain handles it better, especially because Kieran Culkin’s character is actually endearing, whereas Stephen Fry’s character is just plain annoying & grating, despite the attempt to make him a lovable old Polish chap.
While I’m not Jewish and do not have a Holocaust connection like the people in these films, I do have Polish roots and I do feel a connection to Poland. Nonetheless, my connection to these films is limited because I do not have a desire to explore Poland on a heritage tour or to find a connection to the Jewish Poland that existed pre-World War II. It is an important story to tell, of course, and it is an intriguing topic to consider regarding their grief and pain and connection to a horrible past, however it is something that I presumed to have already been addressed in the nearly 80 years since WWII ended and the camps were liberated. Why are there two new films about this exact same story appearing in 2024? Both were in production before the Palestine-Israel events in 2023. Eisenberg’s film, between them, attempts to address this heavier theme in a more intelligent way by connecting the pains of modern descendants of Jewish Poles, with the extreme pain and sadness of their past. There is an incredible speech that Eisenberg’s character David gives in that film at a dinner that delves right into this exact topic, whereas there is a never a coherent moment of reflection like this in Treasure. It never properly examines and contends with these compelling generational differences.
Perhaps one of the key reasons why Eisenberg’s film A Real Pain stands out is that it is much more personal story, authentically told as the filmmaker’s own real story with his own emotions and feelings and concerns expressed through the characters and the filmmaking choices. Treasure, on the other hand, is not Julia von Heinz’s own story, she is a director telling a story that comes from another person. And while she does her best to competently bring this story to the screen, capturing the emotions and feelings of her characters, the authenticity doesn’t shine through, it feels much more performative and obvious than Eisenberg’s creation. This is most evident in the four lead characters (two from each film), and how different they are to watch in each film, despite so many similarities. The biggest difference is, of course, Stephen Fry’s Edek, who is an actual Jewish Pole that survived the Holocaust, making his return to Poland that much more emotionally wrought. However, Fry is a British actor, who had to learn Polish and put on a heavy accent to perform this role. While his Polish is impressive, the performance feels slightly off, and not as wholesome as necessary.
As much as I must compare these two films for being so similar, they do each have different commentary to offer viewers. Treasure is much more about the pain of stepping into the past, and how hard it is for one to do that; all the while the next generation feels like the only way they can fully understand their family is to step into the past. Does she come to understand her father better after this trip? The film didn’t convince me of this, but perhaps in real life she did. A Real Pain is much more about how these modern generation 30-somethings feel about that past, and how they may have not survived the Holocaust but also have their own unique pains and struggles today as well. My biggest complaint with both films is how poorly they represent Polish people. In A Real Pain, they only ever interact with Polish people once or twice, for barely a minute or two. In Treasure, many of the Polish people they interact with come across as sketchy, sneaky, or oddly problematic people. While it may have been a nuanced observation in the true story it’s based on, it comes across as condescending in this film, as if no Poles post-WWII (except for a lobby boy who helps translate and their taxi driver) are good people. Having visited Poland multiple times, I can say this is just not true.
Alex’s Berlinale 2024 Rating: 6 out of 10
Follow Alex on Twitter – @firstshowing / Or Letterboxd – @firstshowing
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