Jesse Eisenberg’s A Real Pain arrives twenty years after his directorial debut, Becoming a Werewolf (an eight-minute film about... well, werewolves), and three years following the success of the critically acclaimed When You Finish Saving the World.
Clocking in at a tight ninety minutes, A Real Pain is short and sweet. It follows the journey of secular Jewish cousins David (Eisenberg) and Benji (Kieran Culkin) as they travel from New York City to Poland in an attempt to honour their grandmother, a Holocaust survivor who fled Poland in 1939. It felt apt to watch it on the anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz-Birkenau, which was observed last Monday as Holocaust Memorial Day.
The script and character development in A Real Pain are exceptional. The cousins, who are perhaps more like brothers, have drifted apart over the years, yet a deep bond remains between them. Their relationship is a complex mix of love, hate, and unspoken envy. They see in each other what they both lack. And, as they visit their grandmother’s hometown, they are forced to confront not only the trauma of their grandmother’s history but also their own histories and selves. In their journey through Poland, David and Benji are forced to confront the aspects of themselves they don’t like: the ones that they wish they could hide from the world. Isn’t that just part of being human? And, in a way, we could see A Real Pain as a film purely dealing with “humans being human”.
Eisenberg and Culkin have undeniable chemistry, with Culkin’s performance standing out in particular. The statue scene is a standout moment, both in terms of writing and acting. The brilliance of this film lies in its dialogue—sharp and witty at times, yet profoundly moving and haunting when needed—for example, the silence during the concentration camp scene.
A Real Pain is a film about the human experience. It encapsulates the inescapable nature of pain. It’s a subject that often goes undiscussed, but perhaps this film will inspire us to reflect on it more openly.