Through scenes of humour and palpable discomfort in Jesse Eisenberg’s A Real Pain, you find yourself waiting for the movie to reach a concentration camp on its Holocaust tour through Poland. You worry if Kieran Culkin’s erratic Benji will cause another scene, raise another salient though sensitive point of argument. But he is an emotionally open guy and takes it in as expected. It’s his cousin David (Eisenberg himself) whose innocuous reaction feels more inappropriate. I’ve never been to the site of a concentration camp, but I have been to both the Anne Frank House in Amsterdam and the Holocaust Memorial in Berlin, both of which are emotionally gutting experiences. And in the moment you wonder who wouldn’t be tangibly affected by that. Evidently, it’s David.
A Real Pain is about two formerly very close cousins on widely different wavelengths in terms of their connections to their pain, both in a general sense of their lives and the world, and in a particular sense of inherited trauma. One is sensitive, irrational, and outspoken to a fault, the other is disciplined, reserved, and intentionally unmoved. Benji and David are on a pilgrimage through Poland, where their late grandmother escaped the Holocaust, to visit her childhood home and reconnect with their Jewish heritage. They do so as part of a tour group with a handful of other diasporic Jews and a sympathetic, educated gentile guide James (Will Sharpe). Benji, dealing with some deep personal issues, makes it a chaotic journey through his charismatic, unpredictably brazen behaviour that David is both embarrassed by and somewhat envies -especially in the real impact Benji manages to have on his fellow tourists.
Eisenberg and Culkin make for a good odd couple as they each play versions of characters they are already known for. There is a hefty degree of Roman Roy in Benji, from his manic extroversion to his poorly concealed insecurity. And likewise David resembles more than a few of Eisenberg’s soft-spoken neurotic dorks; and Eisenberg is keenly aware and critical of that archetype here. The two personalities are adequate foils but they also compliment each other, in a solid manifestation of the relationship between the characters, which is built on some mostly-repressed difficulties but also an honest love. Though Benji is sometimes nonchalant about it, he makes very clear his appreciation to David for arranging the trip and enjoys the chance to spend time with him since their recent semi-estrangement. And David is grateful for the opportunity too, though he can't express it with the openness that Benji does.
Eisenberg asks the audience to look critically at both of these characters, where we might think to just do so of Benji. He is the one after all who reacts to hearing that travel companion Eloge (Kurt Egyiawan) is a survivor of the Rwandan Genocide with an insensitive-sounding "oh snap". Such faux pas are not unusual with him, and yet he may have a better read of people than his cousin, as he on multiple occasions is able to engage if crassly and provoke in meaningful ways his companions, who grow to have a perhaps grudging respect and sympathy towards him, while David ever in the background -the only one of the group not to join in a picture instigated by Benji posing next to the Warsaw Uprising Monument- leaves little impression at all.
The film takes the characters to several such memorials and places of significance to Polish Jewish history, as the background and residual trauma of the Holocaust hangs over all. But the movie isn't solely about that pain as much as it uses the canvas of such a deep experience to force Benji and David to reckon with more immediate pains in their lives and world. A big one of course is that death of their grandmother, to whom Benji was especially close. He is still reeling, much as he tries to cover with artificial high spirits. The loss has clearly sparked a change in how he responds to difficult things, which has further wedged him from David. He tells a story late in the movie that shines a light on some of this -about grandmother slapping him for turning up late to a dinner, and the lesson he took from it being less resentment or embarrassment, but that she loves and worries about him enough not to care about impropriety. David has had less contact with her in recent years, and his stories told to the group -though complimentary- also touch on quirks that Benji feels obligated to defend.
David and Benji's relationship is fascinating in a way you don't often see in movies. It's reminiscent of a lot of friendships or sibling bonds in the real world that are not toxic but are difficult. Benji would be a frustrating person to deal with all the time, and especially in his actions on this tour, you can see it wearing down on David. And in Eisenberg’s great scene of the film, he lets loose to the rest of the group while Benji’s away the bevy of his complex feelings for his cousin -a combination of frustration with the extremes of his behaviour and admiration for the natural charismatic effect he has on people. And it is enacted too in a couple moments between them, where Benji vents some frustration over how guarded David has become. It’s a very honest dynamic, and viewing it largely through David’s perspective, what looks to be a preoccupation with Benji becomes just as much a self-reflection. We, the audience probably have more in common with David -and while Benji isn’t necessarily the answer, we could stand to be a little more in touch.
The subject of the movie is pain and how we deal with it. Outwardly, David suppresses it while Benji expresses it. And though the timing may be awkward he makes some acute arguments about the privilege and comfort with which we cushion the pain in our own lives and in the world. There is something genuinely disturbing about a group of Jewish people riding a train through Poland in first class. There is a way in which stark history as presented by a tour guide or a teacher fails to convey the humanity of that history. David contends in the context of present atrocities and injustices, you can’t just be sad about everything, but sometimes you should -especially, as Benji points out, on a Holocaust tour. David’s numbness, both to the tour and to his own relationship with Benji formed through a recent trauma, is rather unhealthy -more-so even than Benji’s carefree brashness.
A Real Pain, only Eisenberg’s second film as director, is made with tremendous assuredness. A movie that feels directly in conversation with Eisenberg’s self-image -or at least his screen image- it is unexpectedly challenging and pointed. And in spite of that pain it hones in on, it is also charming and fun. Eisenberg and Culkin have good chemistry and their trip has its comic detours, such as when they miss a train stop due to David falling asleep or get in a minor scuffle over a gesture at their grandmother’s former home with the neighbours. The moments of real bonding for these two when they do come up are lovely -and while David sets out thinking the trip is more for Benji’s benefit, it’s ultimately the opposite that turns out to be true.
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