The Essence of "A Real Pain"

A film about the shadow of pain and the intricate legacy it leaves behind

If you must pick one film to see in the next few years, consider the new Jesse Eisenberg-directed, Emma Stone-produced film A Real Pain [Trailer], now in theaters. 

Eisenberg as David and Culkin as Benji meet their tour group.

Eisenberg stars as David, a highly neurotic, successful Brooklynite—hardly a stretch for the film star, given his prior acting roles. The film's premise is that David embarks on a heritage trip to Poland alongside his more charming, carefree, extroverted cousin Benji, played by Kieran Culkin (Succession), to see their late grandmother’s childhood home. Benji was close to his grandmother, Dorie, and David, in contrast, a little less so. The cousins are somewhat distant from one another, and there’s clearly tension - the kind that often builds naturally with adulting and the introduction of marriage and children.

In contrast to Benji, David wears his awkwardness on his sleeve. He externalizes his anxieties at times, such as repeatedly calling and leaving messages for his cousin at the airport because he thinks he’ll be late for the flight. It turns out Benji got there three hours early. Even when he finally allows himself to unwind his repression cathartically and vent about Benji to his tour group, you get the impression they feel for him, but they still like Benji better. David takes pills for OCD, meditates, has a job, a wife, and a kid, and finds his pain to be “unexceptional,” which is why, as he explains to the tour group, he doesn’t go around acting like his cousin. He’s intellectualized his feelings and pathologized the disorders neatly. This knowledge doesn’t make him any happier, though.

“Everyone just wants to have a fucking joyride. People can’t walk around the world just being happy!” - Benji.

Benji is more of the wildcard, and like a young Robert Downey, Jr. in just about any film, he instantly disarms just about anyone he comes into contact with through vulnerability, which reads as authentic but also can feel performative - like he’s sucking all the air out of the room and releasing it in slow puffs, keeping others in his thrall. In the case of the film, it’s his pain, and it’s on display at all times. David is jealous not only of Benji’s charm but also of his ability to externalize feelings in a way that allows him to connect to others. However, he sees the destructive forces Benji employs once he wields that power.

“You light up a room and then shit on everything inside of it.” (David to Benji)

Benji's tendency to express his abrasive and disruptive thoughts significantly alters the atmosphere of the room. However, this outpouring is typically met with silence and a sense of compliance and understanding from those present. In one particular episode, he scolds James, the tour guide, for acting almost robotically and detachedly when they are in a cemetery, with James spewing statistics and historical facts, unaware of the sanctity and emotional weight of being in a Jewish cemetery in Poland with families of survivors. In another scene on the train, when the tour group is sitting in first class riding to Lublin, Benji points out the hypocrisy of Jews riding first class when 80 years ago, they would have been herded in cattle cars. Benji feels physically ill and eventually leaves the group, opting to sit in another part of the train. He isn’t wrong, and every time he has one of these moments, it generally results in growth and awareness with his fellow travelers, like James, the tour guide (Will Sharpe), and Marsha (Jennifer Grey), an affluent, divorced woman who is looking for more of a spiritual awakening in her life, and who bonds with Benji.

David and Benji share a joint on a rooftop - one of two scenes

For a film that explores the Holocaust and the Jewish intergenerational and immigrant experience, there are notably a few non-Jewish-born additions to the cast. Eisenberg introduced the concept of “philosemites,” which, as he defined it, are non-Jewish people who overly identify with Jewish culture. In the film, the philosemite presence acts as a buffer, effectively creating some distance from the deeply sensitive topic of the Holocaust and the shared experience of the Jewish travelers but allowing for allyship and understanding to surface in positive, life-affirming ways.

• James (Will Sharpe), formerly seen in S2 of The White Lotus, plays the Oxford-educated nerdy tour guide with a Sheffield accent. His deep history and love for Eastern Europe, as well as his ability to hold space for the tour group, allow him to effectively be the group's emotional barometer. 

• Eloge (Kurt Egyiawan) is a survivor of the Rwandan genocide and converts to Judaism upon immigrating to Winnipeg as a child with his mother. His family’s experience of being accepted and welcomed by the Jewish community there compels him to convert to Judaism.

L: Marsha (Grey) and R: Benji (Kieran Culkin) and David Kaplan (Jesse Eisenberg) are seen at the far right in a scene from "A Real Pain," directed and written by Eisenberg. (Courtesy Searchlight Pictures)

The reckoning of this film highlights how the descendants of Holocaust survivors and immigrants are held to a higher standard due to the immense sacrifices made by their ancestors. In one particularly poignant moment, as the tour group sits around the dinner table in Poland at a restaurant, David laments about Benji’s attempted suicide and his open struggles with mental health, “How did the product of 1000 different miracles overdose on sleeping pills?”

It’s a heartbreaking and wrenching moment. True to the film's unsettling atmosphere and moral essence, we’re denied any sense of catharsis as the narrative reaches its conclusion. The emotional incongruity remains intact. And the lack of a true “happy ending” release only heightens unresolved tensions.

Summary

If A Real Pain has a message, it’s to reserve judgment on those who are in pain and to acknowledge that we all express mental anguish differently. It’s not at all didactic or overtly preachy. It broaches mental pain and suffering with the kind of sensitivity and understanding that only an empath can. It allows access to discomfort and doesn’t prescribe an artificial response. It says to the children, grandchildren, and future great-grandchildren of Holocaust survivors, “You may not have experienced the horrors of the Holocaust, but can you still experience a real pain.”

Benji has lost his grandmother, and so has David. But for Benji, he’s grieving all the time, out loud for everyone to hear. He thrives in the chaos of strangers because the attachment to anything more is too painful.

Interesting Facts about The Film - Art Imitates Life

At the end of the film, Benji and David (Eisenberg) visit their late grandmother’s home in Poland to pay their respects. The building they visited was, in fact, once owned by Eisenberg’s family. Eisenberg now has dual citizenship—American and Polish.