'An American Pickle' is Seth Rogen's ode to vulnerable masculinity in 2020
Don't be fooled by the time-lapse magic realism of 'An American Pickle' or wonder about whether Herschel Greenbaum (Seth Rogen), the Jewish immigrant from the 1920s, is an authentic depiction of someone from that era.
Instead, think of him, that pickled ancestor, as someone from your own family tree whose name you find in an Ellis Island entry when you decide, on a whim, to trace how your family came to America. What you will learn about your great-great-grandfather will be obscure, limited to a few official entries in public records - he will be more of a fable than a real, living, breathing human being. And that is what Herschel Greenbaum really is - he is the ancestral spirit come to haunt Ben Greenbaum (a stand-in for Seth Rogen himself) as he tries to figure out what it is to be a true mensch in 2020. It is about wondering if by dismissing the older generations' values around gender, race and civil rights, we have also come to dismiss their more admirable values around hard work, their 'never-say-die' attitude, or even their ability to genuinely grieve and thus, ultimately, get a handle on their traumas.
While we may have thoughts about living up to the family name late at night after too many coffees, Ben Greenbaum has the misfortune of actually meeting the flesh and bone manifestation of his ancestor. They are both in their 30s but separated by two generations and look exactly the same except for Herschel's facial hair - it is a motif that drives the plot later but also represents the fact that Herschel's blood and genes flow in Ben's veins.
The stylistic choice of the film is to start with Herschel's story - of living a dreary existence in the fictional Eastern European country of Schulpsk where anti-semitism comes in the form of murderous Cossacks. He migrates to America with his equally ambitious wife Sarah (Sarah Snook) after pillaging Cossacks kill everyone in their village.
This is played for laughs - in the same way we giggle incredulously when we hear of the sort of atrocities that happened so long ago because they are so unbelievable and unreal in today's context. In America, Herschel gets a job as a rat-killer in a pickle factory and is backed into a pickle brining vat by an army of rats, right after he promises his pregnant wife that the Greenbaums will be a famous and powerful name in America in a hundred years.
And of course, his Rip Van Winkle-like immersion in brine is disturbed in exactly a hundred years when he wakes up to find himself in the Brooklyn of now where his beloved Sarah has died 80 years ago, after giving birth to the line of Greenbaums that ends in Ben, the computer coder whose vulnerable masculinity is the exact opposite of the brash, aggressive manhood of Herschel.
It is possibly a conscious choice to steer clear of that gaping wound of the Holocaust in the collective Jewish memory. Both Herschel's generation and Ben's generation have not been directly affected by the mass genocide of WW II, but both generations of Jews were and are faced with the garden variety anti-semitism of their own eras.
Herschel deals with it by becoming even more closely intertwined with his religion and culture, while Ben deals with it by becoming more secular. But by the end, Ben too starts finding comfort in the rituals of religions, especially around grieving and acknowledging the death of loved ones - in this case his own loving and supportive parents. Since no modern equivalent exists of sharing and processing grief, it is a touching moment when Ben among strangers in the "old country" of Schulpsk finally cries about his parents dying in a car crash. It is a trauma that he has left unprocessed and singing the Mourner's Kaddish at a stranger's funeral allows him to grieve his own loss.
Before that and Ben's eventual reconciliation with Herschel, the two generations clash in a series of escalating events since both are critical of the flaws they represent of their own times. Herschel sees Ben as someone who is disconnected from family, from passion, from grief, from everything that makes life full and worth living. Ben finds Herschel's prejudices and narrow-mindedness as despicable and unevolved. But after a few misadventures, and a revelation about why Ben called his app "Beep Bop" (which is surprisingly affecting), they pray and make up. In the end credits, they bond over 'Yentl' starring Barbara Streisand.
The whole exercise is a way for Seth Rogen to pay an ode to the vulnerable male of today that wonders if he is being less mensch than the generations of men who came before him with 'real' jobs. Whether being exposed to the easy luxuries of today has made him less hardy and less adult than the men of the 'ye old days'. It is about finding a place in a world which no longer needs him to be a protector and provider.
'An American Pickle' premiered on August 6 and is available to stream on HBO Max.