“Treasure” is the story of Ruth (Lena Dunham), a woman in her thirties, who wants to know more about what it was like for her sixty-something father, Edek (Stephen Fry), to grow up in Poland in the 1940s and be the only member of his family to survive the Auschwitz concentration camp.
Ruth was going to make the trip by herself, but her father insists on going with her, in part to distract and keep her from discovering some of the horrors of his young life, which he has tried to forget because he doesn’t want that trauma dug up again. This is 1991, nearly five decades after he escaped and moved to the US, where he now considers himself a New Yorker. At virtually every step, he upends Ruth’s plans, insisting on visiting places he remembers fondly instead of the depressing ones she insists on seeing.
But she finally gets him to return to the apartment he grew up in, where he discovers to his shock that the people living there still have items that belonged to Edek’s family long ego, including a couch and a porcelain tea set. This dislodges memories in Edek’s brain he has long suppressed, and his horror is only magnified when Ruth later returns to the apartment without him to buy some of those objects back. He can’t understand why she would do such a thing, while she is happy to have some tangible pieces of her family’s history.
The duo also visit the site of the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp, where a guide gives a few details on what they’re looking at as they move around and through the structures that remain. But Edek rejects those tourist talking points as his own memories come flooding back. He remembers every inch of the camp, including where the trains brought them in, where the barracks he slept in were, and the building where Jews were murdered en masse.
Unfortunately, these scenes aren’t as moving as they should be because writers Julia von Heinz and John Quester (who based their screenplay on a novel by Lily Brett) have made Ruth a very unlikeable constant complainer. Or perhaps the blame should fall on Dunham, who whines her way through the movie from start to finish, and doesn’t really feel invested in the emotional connection Ruth should be making with Edek.
As for Fry, he actually had Jewish ancestors who were sent to a Nazi concentration camp in what is now Slovakia. He does a good job with a Polish accent and speaking the language. Yet for the majority of the movie, he plays Edek with an almost jolly exterior. Perhaps that’s a reflection of the character’s current happy life in New York, which would be a victory in overcoming the agony and anguish of the experiences of so long ago. But his portrayal doesn’t work, either, and a scene late in the movie with a woman he meets in their hotel is completely unnecessary.
I found “Treasure” to be a big disappointment and can’t recommend it, with a rating of only 4 out of 10. Opens tomorrow in theaters.