An American Pickle is laconic emulation, a state of emergency, yet I only fear its familiarity. It is kitschy but queer, lacking the vitalism of idiosyncrasy making Jewish heritage so interesting, and which surely gave forth under the rural semiosis of fixed encounter. However, it is grinding rather than whirring, as if it were heightened by a microdose; and it becomes certain, through the film, that this is the feeling of romance, dumped by weak gravitational force, its wool hung on a loose nail. An American Pickle has no aesthetic flourish in sight, with the exception of irremediable contrast—between charlatanism and gusto, bandwidth and capacitance—which in itself is no small jar, but it flatly refuses to carry these out into concordance, into clarity, all the while ignoring the proximal and distal ghosts of desire making discomfort—making vicarious allusion, so to say, verboten—and thusly screwing down its bare. For all its aggressive modelling, its seminal modes, its impromptu energetics and changeling Zeiten, the film spills and spoils a lot, and über Seth Rogen makes it very clear that he does not speak a Real language, one of self-consciousness, which is I suppose his casual traducement of acting, of actorship, yet placated and largely unhelpful. Its culminant restoration is, at least, cathected mindfully, and for this the film leads itself well.
An American Pickle (2020)
