A trip to Auschwitz raises painful family history in a film that fumbles its honourable intentions with overstuffed and miscast characters
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tephen Fry and Lena Dunham play a Jewish father and daughter who miscommunicate their way through 90s Poland, until a visit to Auschwitz allows them to dig up the past . There’s no doubting the good intentions of Dunham, Fry and the esteemed German director/writer, Julia von Heinz. All three clearly want to use this adaptation of Lily Brett’s novelto explore survivor’s guilt and enduring antisemitism. Alas, most of the film’s big scenes are either tonally muddled or soul-crushingly predictable.
Fry, who learned Polish to play Edek Rothwax, is miscast as an honorary New Yorker whose avuncular persona masks fear and fury. We believe in the character’s charm and suppressed pain . What he can’t convey is Edek’s Big Apple attitude or rage. As for Dunham, her Ruth – sometimes abject, frequently abrasive – is a potentially fascinating figure who’s been overloaded with distracting problems.
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