A Real Pain
A reflection on the film
The title ‘A Real Pain’ echoes in my head a comment you may make about a sibling or someone you love but ‘does yer head in’. The film is about two cousins David (Jesse Eisenberg) and Benji (Kieran Culkin) Kaplan whose grandmother Doris left money for them to visit her home in Krasnystaw, Poland.
Like many cousins and friends, there can be a closeness in childhood that drifts as we journey to adulthood. Deaths and funerals draw together those who have drifted. The film tells whether what once was in youth can be reignited as adults.
David although working in New York City, married and a father still pops pills for his anxiety. He held it together. Whereas Benji had only six months before overdosed. When Benji felt something everyone knew about it.
Benji is feeling real pain. His grandmother who had to leave Poland due to Nazism connected with him in a way few others did. He was struggling with her loss.
When they arrive in Warsaw they join a small tour group led by an English graduate James (Will Sharpe). At introductions, James declares he is not Jewish but is fascinated by Judaism and its Polish history. Marcia ( Jennifer Grey) is recently divorced and as with the others is interested in her ancestors' story. A retired couple Diane (Lisa Sadovy) and Mark (Daniel Oreskes) make up the rest of the group along with Eloge (Kurt Egyiawan). Eloge had converted to Judaism being a native of Rwanda and having fled the genocide.
Benji verbalises what comes into his head with David apologising for him. But it is Benji's bluntness and raw emotion that touches the others.
At the Monument to the Ghetto Heroes he on impulse creates a reenactment of the battle and encourages the others to get involved, but David declines. David is unsure of the appropriateness whereas Benji is feeling it.
In another scene when the group is on the train to Lublin, Benji becomes emotional as he considers that Jewish people boarded trains that led them to death camps. He challenges the group for not allowing themselves to feel the pain of what happened.
Somehow when the tour goes to Majdanek, a Nazi death camp I felt I was on the tour. It is Benji who is unconsolable on the train as they return to the hotel.
On the last day, the cousins find their grandma's old home. It seemed almost a non-event as the previous days had worked out their emotions.
The cousins return to the US with David going home and Benji deciding to hang around the airport.
This film is about trauma and the legacy of the Holocaust on subsequent generations. It showed up in both cousins but in quite different ways.
The film is based on Eisenberg’s grandmother who fled Poland and also Eisenberg’s attempt to connect with Poland. Benji seems to represent the pain that is involved in such a story that so easily could be held together with the help of anxiety pills.
We likely all know a Benji in our families and or friendship groups who simply can’t contain ‘a real pain’
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