An American Pickle
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Seth Rogen is an interesting filmmaker. Sometimes I feel like he is a manifestation of me when I will be older. But to be honest it's just wishful thinking. Wait for my review on The Fablemans to understand why. Seth Rogen is Jewish. He looks kind of big. Sometimes directs movies. He has Ukrainian ancestry. And he is a fighter for Freedom. Basically me. No... Wishful thinking. I don't think I will get anywhere near as popular. Basically Spielberg. Yeah that's better.
The movie An American Pickle seems to be a movie about Seth Rogen and feelings he has towards his ancestry and stuff. The movie is about a Jewish man from one hundred years ago, who travels time in the most ridiculous way ever and meets with his gray-grandson. Both of which are played by Seth. So the movie can be interpreted as a kind of inner dialogue of a person struggling with his identity. One side is this ultra-religious Yiddish speaking bearded man in black clothes. And the other is this modern high-tech person who develops software and doesn't believe in any god. And the comedy of the movie is about the differences between the two characters clash in an ideological sense. While also learning that they are, in a way, the same.
Director Brandon Trost who's second movie is An American Pickle made a rather good job with it. In the prologue, where we see the 1920s, there is a lot of interesting compositions. And a lot of interesting visual comedy. Which means the movie doesn't rely much on the dialogue to be funny. Toward the end he relax a bit. But even towards the end you can see a good number of visual comedy still present. I think that Brandon is a solid director.
The movie looks very good. The cinematography is fantastic. The prologue scene is shot in the 4:3 aspect ratio, which fooled me to think that the whole thing would be in 4:3. But it switched to 16:9 as the movie came to the present day part. This is a technique borrowed from Wes Anderson's films. Where he likes to shoot the scene in the popular aspect ratios of the time depicted on screen. But An American Pickle doesn't go too bold with it. We see the weird aspect ratio only in the prologue. And then it's all standard stuff.
Acting-wise I think a lot of people may misunderstand it. It is obvious that Seth Rogen put a lot work into the characters. The whole prologue section has dialogue in Yiddish. And he had to learn to sound native in Yiddish. Which he pulled off. Then perhaps the visual effects of the two Seth Rogens interacting with each other made the acting a bit more complicated. Every time that he is alone in the scene, he is great. Every time that the two version are together, it seems as if he thinks more about the technical challenges of the shot, rather than about what the character should think about. But it doesn't take you too much away from the movie. It just feels like suddenly there is a tit bit of something artificial about it all acting-wise.
Logistically this movie should have been a nightmare. We have a full grown beard version of Seth interact with a shaved version of Seth. And the beard is one hundred percent real. So they had to shoot the entire movie with Seth with beard. Then shave him. Then shoot the entire movie again, with precisely the same camera angles and lighting conditions. They did have a Seth's double in the takes for reference. But still. This is an enormous project just to make the main visual effect work in this movie. Holly shit! To be honest I was kind of surprised by the effect. I was watching and thinking how the hell did they manage all of it. Well apparently they just had to do an enormous amount of planning.
The movie, apart from being a comedy, also has a dramatic side to it. So it is a little sentimental. It's not your typical Seth Rogen movie where shit just happens in the most vulgar way possible. Here toward the end I felt real feelings. For Jewish people that know something about the religion it would be even more sentimental. There is a scene toward the end that I felt a lot to, probably because I have so much experience with this religion.
Similar to Spielberg's The Terminal and the fictional country of Krakozhia, the movie also has a fictional country roughly from the same geographic region. This one is called Schlupsk. Though while the movie treats Schlupsk as a country, maybe they are referring to Słupsk which is a city in Poland. Which would both make sense geographically and would explain the character's dislike of Polish people. The movie also has a lot of references to the Kazachs which are associated with the Ukraine more. A home country of Seth Rogen's ancestors.
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