“A Real Pain:" Hitting a Nerve

Ever since I saw “A Real Pain,” I haven’t stopped talking about it. Jesse Eisenberg’s new film is about two incredibly opposite cousins, David and Benji, who join a tour in Poland to honor their grandmother and explore their family’s history. Choosing to see this movie alone on a Sunday night was one of my most memorable experiences this school year. Since I am a huge movie talker, I am grateful to the attendees of the 7:30 p.m. showing at the AMC in Kips Bay for not shushing me when I babbled to myself. 

As the fourth-generation descendant of a Holocaust survivor, I often hear conversations about how important it is never to forget. Eisenberg created this exact narrative in his film, portraying two cousins who actively decide to prove that they will never forget, cousins who learn about their history following their grandmother’s recent passing. Benji, portrayed by Kieran Culkin, is an outgoing, talkative individual who seeks to create personal connections with everyone he meets. He is unlike David, played by Jesse Eisenberg, who is more introverted and chooses to go on this trip to learn and spend time with his cousin. Their story and dynamic carry this movie and help maintain the realness behind this film. 

The movies I have watched in my lifetime about the Holocaust are similar to Steven Spielberg’s “Schindler’s List,” Zach Gold’s “Escape from Sobibor,” or even a Nazi perspective in Jonathan Glazer’s “The Zone of Interest.” I have never seen a story of my own or even been able to relate to the characters I had seen in these movies. There is a difference between feeling empathy and feeling similar to the characters on screen. As Benji and David experienced their tour, I found myself back in Poland in 2022, on my tour of my own grandparents’ lives. When I was there, my mother wrote me a letter, which she opened with, “You carry a name that the ground you are walking on will recognize.” 

This is how I understood Benji and David’s feelings when they chose to take this tour and return to their grandmother’s home. Yes, they visited famous landmarks and did the classic things everyone does when they return and visit. They also expressed themselves in humor and sincerity, adding lightness to the film. However, the deepest parts of the movie were not when they were at these significant places but rather when they were the most vulnerable themselves. 

Spoilers ahead: A scene that resonated with me was when David and Benji were on a train to another city on their tour, and David could not handle being in the first-class section. Overwhelmed, he had an outburst, muttering to everyone that he could not fathom how they did not feel guilty about where they were sitting. He felt like they were on their way to places that once represented the most vibrant places of Jewish life, and now they were vacant, and everyone was ignorant of this. This was a classic example of generational guilt, something frequently experienced in my home. Sometimes, we feel guilty for living as well as we do when, just a couple of generations before us, our great-grandparents were starving and freezing. However, this scene ends when Benji and David sneak onto another train and ride in first class for free. Finally, Benji is satisfied with this outcome, feeling as if he stuck it to the Polish for the treatment of his grandmother.

“A Real Pain” carries a heavy load, both for Benji and David and for all those who go and experience it. I felt the emotions I remembered I had just a couple of years ago in Majdanek, when I visited with my seminary, and the feelings that followed after the characters’ experience going to that same camp. I watched them return to their grandmother’s home, and I felt a similar emotion as when I returned to the streets of Lublin, where my great-grandmother grew up. I saw their frustrations and discomfort with the way they were acting in Poland, and I remembered how I felt as I ate lunch in the parking lot of Auschwitz. There were so many parts that were their own, but there were so many parts that were reminiscent of me. 

Culkin and Eisenberg create a family dynamic that seamlessly flows — you forget it’s fiction. The characters have issues they work to fix, problems rooted in pains from generations before them. They come together in the location where thousands of atrocities occurred for their people to reconcile the grief within. They come together as they return to their grandmother’s old house, and each places a stone in her memory. (Then the neighbors call them out for it and yell at them, but forget that part. It wasn’t that funny.) This trip not only softened the blow of losing their grandmother but also the pain of losing each other over the years. 

“A Real Pain” is about the hardships of the trauma felt by Holocaust survivors and how this carries into the following generations. It’s about how we all feel this pain, whether we confront it or shove it deep down until it comes back to show itself. We share the pain with our parents, siblings and cousins as we unite to rebuild what we once lost, harnessing hurt into motivation. It is how we overcome, how we learn and how we remember.

Photo caption: Culkin and Eisenberg create a family dynamic that seamlessly flows — you forget it’s fiction.

Photo credit: Raph_PH / Wikimedia Commons