A Real Pain: Subtle, Effective Holocaust Film
What is life? A real pain. But it’s also hilarious, heartwarming, adventurous, fun, edifying, sad, disappointing, and overwhelming. Jesse Eisenberg’s A Real Pain is a nuanced and deep exploration of a relationship between two cousins and our relationship with the past in a taut, entertaining ninety minutes.
Jesse Eisenberg mashes up several genres with the film: buddy, road trip, family, and Holocaust. By mashing them together, Eisenberg crafts a nuanced, deep Holocaust film superior to many in recent memory. A Real Pain follows the European vacation of two mismatched cousins on a trip to their ancestral homeland of Poland to honor their deceased Polish, Jewish grandmother. By joining a tour group of fellow Jews, we are introduced to several other perspectives on Judaism, Jewish history, and the legacy of the Holocaust, but the main crux of the film is the relationship between the two cousins.
A Real Pain begins with Jesse Eisenberg’s David calling his cousin multiple times on the way to the airport, while Kieran Culkin’s Benji hangs out in a fun sweatshirt with a backpack that looks like it belongs on the back of an idealistic twenty year old. They’re different. We know that from the opening minutes of the film. Even their names tell you that. David is a pretty standard Jewish name. When you say “Benji,” it sounds as if your mouth is jumping. It’s fun to say. Benji’s also the name of a fictional dog. And Benji the character in A Real Pain is fun.
Benji (Kieran Culkin) and David (Jesse Eisenberg) in a still from A Real Pain
If you were to divide the world between introverts and extroverts, I would be an introvert. So I deeply felt David’s envy of his cousin, so comfortable in his own skin. Pretending to be a soldier at a Warsaw Uprising memorial. Comfortable talking in front of groups (of strangers!). Getting people’s life stories after a ten minute conversation.
David wishes he was Benji. I wish I was Benji. But maybe you don’t? Maybe David doesn’t either? Family is complicated and people are complicated. What Jesse Eisenberg advances in A Real Pain is that empathy is all important in life. David needs to have empathy for Benji, who needs to have empathy for David. Both need to have empathy for their fellow travelers, who need to have empathy for them. It’s tough. The film doesn’t say that it’s easy. Benji is fun, but he’s also abrasive. David is steady, but he’s closed off. The others in the tour group have their own positives and negatives, as everyone does. The important thing is to understand where they’re coming from. That is not a revolutionary thought. They teach this to children, but it’s obviously difficult. What Eisenberg uniquely does is to use this buddy, road trip film as a way to grapple with the Holocaust.
Though Eisenberg could have used the Holocaust as a cudgel to bash you over the head with his point or to use it as a transparent, lazy plot device like The Brutalist, he prefers to let his story and the cousins’ relationship do the talking for how we should grapple with the Holocaust today. Some may prefer a real deep discussion about the Holocaust or tears during the concentration camp visit or parallels to the modern Middle East situation, but Eisenberg wisely lets the images speak for themselves and lets the emotions bubble up through the characters and how they interact.
It’s an incredibly heavy thing to experience and Eisenberg lets the experience breathe. It’s also kind of a weird thing. You’re on vacation, but you’re visiting a concentration camp. You see piles of shoes that were worn by real people sitting in a pile. You walk through the gas chambers. You see the ovens. That’s overwhelming. But millions of people do it every year.
David (Jesse Eisenberg) at the Majdanek concentration camp in Poland in a still from A Real Pain
A particularly memorable shot at the concentration camp leaves the camera with a static frame as the tourists come into frame, pause, experience what they need to, and then leave frame. It reminded me so much of tourism. Few places are as emotionally heavy as a concentration camp, but when you visit historical sites, you are visiting a place where people lived, died, loved, and lost. In the Tower of London, you read a plaque that states people were beheaded there. You look and you try to think of that. How bonkers it is that people hundreds of years ago were beheaded. You are standing in a spot where people died. You try your best to empathize and imagine, but it’s difficult to do so. And emotionally exhausting. So you walk on.
David (Jesse Eisenberg) hugs Benji (Kieran Culkin) at the airport in a still from A Real Pain
With Benji and David, Eisenberg explores how difficult the act of empathy is and how almost impossible and exhausting it is. But it’s necessary. David and Benji need it to continue a relationship. The tour group needs it to not derail their tour. The world needs it so as not to repeat the past, which is why these museums and memorials are so important. How can you inflict such pain on others when you see the destruction in human terms? World War II and history in general can nullify their emotional effects with statistics. What do millions of deaths look like? I don’t know. I can’t fathom it. I can’t even fathom a few thousand deaths from an ancient battle. But suddenly those statistics become real when you learn about their life, their hopes, their dreams. They’re not a statistic. They’re a pair of shoes they wore to go to the market every Monday. They’re a favorite belt they wore on special occasions. They’re people.
With A Real Pain, Jesse Eisenberg created an entertaining and subtle Holocaust movie, much more effective than if he had treated it in the standard way. When you see a Benji in real life, you may think he’s an asshole. But now you’ll realize that maybe he is, but he’s also a person.