In the era of trauma dump and trauma porn, Jesse Eisenberg’s A Real Pain has an articulate profound conversation of collectivism and individualism as a heartfelt examination of how one navigates and distances the pain of the past and present. 

A Real Pain has a fairly simple premise: two mismatched cousins reuniting after time apart and with their own lives to travel to Poland in honor of their late grandmother. The trip sets up what will be a cathartic experience in grappling with ancestral trauma and mending a fractured relationship between the two cousins. Comedic in tone, Eisenberg’s script balances the humor with lightheartedness to pose a story of the weight of past suffering as these two trail the remains of a war-torn Poland. 

Surprisingly, the overanxious Eisenberg and neurotic Culkin have never shared the screen until now because they are the comedic duo the people never knew they needed. Where Jesse’s timid personality stops, and Culkin’s outgoing charisma swoops in as they go back and forth with typical cousin banter. Like most relationships where there is a jealous bone peeking out of the way, they engage in discourse with slight jabs disguised as passive compliments is so entertaining. Obvious let-outs of years of resentment towards one another for having the thing the other doesn’t have feel so realized without having to dive into centuries’ worth of character exposition.  These are two beings who have grown up together the same but took different paths in their lives with Eisenberg as David an overworked father who blocks out his emotions and the empath Benji living at home in his mother’s basement taking on each day in the present with no plan. They hit a point in their relationship where they no longer understand how to interact with the adult versions they have grown into, only recognizing the adolescents that they’ve been accustomed to. 

Fresh off his four-season Succession run, Culkin settles into his first high-profile film role in quite some time. Shedding off the layers of Roman Roy for the emotionally vulnerable yet explosive Benji. Opposite of David through his ability to say exactly what is on his mind at the moment and relate to his fellow humans based on their auras. Sensing sadness from one of the tour-goers, Marcia, he finds himself of use approaching with selflessness to provide comfort and a shoulder to lean on to those who need it. He never shies away from other people’s or his troubles seeking it as a point of bonding for the people he comes across. Something his cousin can’t seem to grasp with how easy it comes to Benji to meld into whoever he sets his eyes on. Culkin’s quick quips cause loud laughs that slowly morph into tears as the perky exterior of Benji melts when confronted with the painful truth of the past. Kieran’s spontaneity as an actor is infectious opposite Eisenberg bringing him out of his shell a bit for both direction and acting.  

Eisenberg opens himself up as a director, writer, and actor, unlike anything we have seen before. Following mixed reviews to his directorial debut, his sophomore effort feels like a course correction to the parts of his film that didn’t work mainly with how he brought himself more into a personal story. As David, he has given himself a less showy part than Benji but gives one of his best performances since his role as Mark Zuckerberg in The Social Network. Haboring jealousy of Benji, in one of the film’s major turning points he delivers a subtle monologue about his dear cousin conveying his mixed communication between how the two have chosen to live their lives. A moment of realization about their dynamic how David feels the plight of both his ancestors and Benji bringing him down into a mess of nerves only off-put by throwing himself into work. 

Eisenberg’s M.O. as a director between his two films has been exploring unconditional love and acceptance between family members. His characters’ disputes often come from their inability to allow the other to grow past the idea they have of them. For Benji and David, Benji constantly repeats how he misses the emotional David who used to spend all his time with his cousin while David sees Benji as an incompetent adult always winning over rooms. Though they can’t see eye to eye there is an apparent love the two have for one another strictly because they are blood related. In the real world if they were two strangers the magnetic field pulling them together might not exist with how opposite they are. Now with a group of unknowns, their dynamic is introduced to the audience as it is the group.

Eisenberg is smart in the way he builds out his ensemble with a range of people with varied separations of pain specifically relating to the Jewish experience and Holocaust. Making up the group are descendants whose families left before the atrocity, a woman whose mother was in the camps, a man who experienced the Rwandan Genocide and then converted to Judaism, a tour guide with absolutely no tie to the Jewish culture or religion just a fascination with the people, and of course the third generation cousins. 

As a fourth-generation descendant of the Armenian genocide, I often compare my daily burdens to those of my ancestors who survived by a miracle to make it out of one of the world’s largest tragedies. Descendents carry the generational trauma down our lineage of unresolved pain and confrontation over the events of our history. There is a constant weight worn on making your ancestors proud of their struggle to conquer the world. Eisenberg’s David goes into this as he observes his fellow tour takers who all document their family’s struggles and how they turned it into a blessing comparing himself who is so thrown into work with the unmotivated Benji. He can’t fathom how someone so gifted as Benji could want to throw their life away when they come from a painful past. 

The choice of having these two men head to a tour to learn about their past speaks of the way people can be tourists in their pain with an entire industry dedicated to giving a luxury tour through the world’s greatest tragedies.  Replacing real-life testimonies with facts as a wedge of separation makes these people into another statistic instead of a living breathing person who shares similarities with those embarking on a tour to learn about them. Wading in others’ pain as a gimmick instead of taking it seriously is a form of coping that Benji demands multiple times to remove the blockade and stick the pain right in their faces whether it’s silence at the cemetery or an outburst on the train. There is a need to earn from suffering as he feels better placing his easygoing self in the face of hardship than politely accepting the benefits given to him by his ancestors. 

Shots of post-war architecture mixed with war-imped buildings that hold the secrets of those who once inhabited these places during peak agony say all that it needs to in their quick pass by.  The camera passes by the streets that once housed a Jewish population before being erased by the Nazis. Even traveling to arrive at the actual caps in silence reflecting on the amount of people who came and went through this horrifying hall of monstrous vile actions their presence of what happened is felt from the emptiness. Pain can be found in every corner of life as it’s frozen in time through buildings and statues free from gentrification that immortalize the destruction still lingering in the world. It’s a feeling that will always be present as it sits with us and unexpectedly leaks out through triggers. One can try to block out unwanted feelings of agony but it will always find a way to creep back in. David and Benji’s different styles further prove this point when Benji brings up how much he missed when David used to cry over everything as well as the discussion by the group into all the outlets to numb one’s tragedy. 

Yoga, meditation, therapy, work, eating, and so much more are all ways of either releasing or repressing discomfort when we feel that it’s not appropriate to get into it. As Benji brings up when David doesn’t want to dive into hardship, isn’t a tour of the Holocaust the most appropriate place to relinquish in torment and express one’s sadness? If not now then when is it a safe space to confront the horrors of the past?  Benji and David represent different sides of this spectrum with how they process suffering in their current lives and the lives that came before them with one moving on from the tears while the other feels comfortable carrying the pain into every aspect of their being.

There is so much conditioning to maintaining a straight face in the company of tragedy but is it these defense mechanisms that turn the world unresponsive from struggle after struggle? Is it fine to respond to a paper cut the same as a shooting, are we allowed to dwell in our feelings when something individually affects us or if it doesn’t amount to the collective journey of pain does it even matter? These constant conversations are so well expressed by Eisenberg’s sharp script in ways that sound like humans talking instead of generated chatgpt responses. There is not one answer to pain responses; it’s a complexity that has multiple angles.

One of the most special films of the year, A Real Pain allows the breathing room to decipher different degrees of pain to simultaneously co-exist making no single pain less real than the other saying it’s okay to feel this way and it’s normal to not pretend to be happy all the time because just like Benji sometimes you have to let it all out on a moving train car. 

Grade: A

Oscars Prospects:
Likely: Best Supporting Actor (Kieran Culkin), Best Original Screenplay, Best Picture
Should be Considered: Best Actor (Jesse Eisenberg)

Release Date: November 1, 2024
Where to Watch: In Select Theaters