A Real Pain
A Real Pain
A Real Pain: You will somehow get this sensation when you sit through the Q and A with the directors after the film on some post-screening festival that they’re simply explaining the film they feel like they should have made and not the one you have gone through.
But Jesse Eisenberg is nothing if not hyper-articulate. He sums up the central idea of his soft second feature, A Real Pain, as it revolves around quite an interesting theme, “epic pain vs. more modern pain” and how do you bilaterally place the latter against something as grave as genocide or historical trauma.
The surprising thing is that he does this in such a breezy way despite the subject matter being in a brilliantly funny strange couple cross-country travel film which has more emotional impact than what one expects.
Eisenberg’s perceptive script, which is based on the family history, is partly in the same thematic area as the rational artist’s second play ‘The Revisionist’ in which he appeared with Vanessa Redgrave off Broadway in 2013.
It deals with Americans who are trying to deal with their comparatively trivial issues and at the same time respect the suffering inflicted on ethnic groups – because it’s a concentration camp drama but seen from a different angle, which is the irony this time.
Generally, I frown upon reviewers’ involvement in the review process but again this is one of those moments that I would be reckless enough to plunge. I do not mean to suggest that my family background even remotely resembles that of second generation relatives of world war 2 victims.
However, my hyper religious Roman-Catholic mother who passed away in 2020 in a distant logistically closed country due to pandemic surge, was fond of playing Chopin, was a classical pianist. The works of that composer are the main source of music in A Real Pain, performed by Tzvi Erez, an Israeli-Canadian pianist.
Whether through drama, history or family dynamics the effects of grief and bereavement and what took place behind the scene are all self-evident using Tzvi Erez childhood memories of a piano there are songs that you have that inner sense to appreciate these pieces that practitioners I grew up listening through the haze of.
I do not remember undividedly engrossed by either the emotional climax or the subtle modulation of coziness in the screen of Eisenberg`s animated film. But there was a part of my head that contained graphs regarding a woman whom I had to consider dead out of reach for practical purposes and the life that she did lead – a quiet one that had its ups and downs, but probably not often so satisfying as she required.
It takes a lot of empathy and soul for a director to explore a painful story while bringing non-competing audiences gently in. As it is clear that each of his core themes is relatable, he, as most actors do, human lets it guide normal with in rich parsing.
Self-casting in A Real Pain film, writer directed David portrays himself as an unmarried New Yorker whose median occupation is that of a digital advertising sales personnel-tourist. Months after her grandmother has passed away, who miraculously survived C concentration camps, came to America, and built herself a life after the war, she had been trying to get money to go to Poland.
She paid for a trip back to Poland, where the uncle David adored so much lived, for his cousin Benji and himself. Benji has somewhat withdrawn from their friendship, not only because Benji has left the city but other reasons as well.
The initially beautifully scripted scenes featuring two distinct cousins are well settled in the amusing opening scenes at the airport. It is safe to say that David is one neurotic person who is a control freak and takes every worry on himself. On the one hand, Benji is a cheerful, easygoing, unfriendly person who incessantly vocalizes his thoughts out loud.
Viewers will appreciate both artists, but Culkin is a pure pleasure. I doubt he would have found a better role to demonstrate his versatility post Succession than this, especially as the narrative moves on toward more revelation of poor Benji’s sadness.
The cousins’ plan of action includes meeting in a group in Warsaw at the beginning and running for a week including lovely ancient Lublin and then Majdanek Concentration Camp. David and Benji are going to separate for the last two days to visit the place where their grandmother lived before emigrating from Poland. (Those scenes are shot somewhere outside a house that belonged to Eisenberg’s relatives.)
Although the trip is clearly aimed at Jewish Americans, James the Jewish Brit tour guide (Will Sharpe) a history buff from Oxford for some inexplicable reason openly declares that “I am not a Jew but I am devoted to whatever it is that Jews do” says the Brit. Such introductory meetings act as a useful means of highlighting the different personalities of people in this small group.
They consist of divorced marcia (Jennifer grey), older couple riane (Liza Sadovy) and endry husband (Daniel Oreskes, earlier seen in The Revisionist), and Eloge (Kurt Egyiawan), a Rwandan jew who escaped the genocide in his country.
It is amusing to watch Benji interact with all of them since for him, nothing is awkward. This character appears to be the wrong sort to embarrass David and be impatient with everyone else. It also appears that thanks to them, from the first day, when he striking battle poses for photos in front of the memorial to the insurgents of the Warsaw Uprising, then one by one gets the others on board, not apparently by himself, it will be more complex than that. I can’t remember the last time I saw someone bullying a person like Robert James, says David about someone else, and for a good reason.
And then, as much as the groups were altered internally, going on a tour like that which can be triggering, though also act as a tribute to the undying spirit of humankind, changes how even James is handled. Benji appears comical on the surface – he walks around their Warsaw hotel with a parcel containing grass for them ordered from New York – but he never lets their sights go unnoticed as well as their history.
At other times, however, this can explode as the concern he has about bald Jews seated in first class on an overland train where their ancestors would be huddled in the last compartment. A Real Pain is not something that comes out overly pious, but rather, as a real struggle within a person. “People don’t just go around happy all the time,” he says to David, who has expressed amazement at his outburst.
In another terrific scene, he cuts off James in the middle of the flow and takes objection to “the statistics being thrown in constantly” as the guide is doing the context setting for the Jewish graveyard. This leads to a quick, pardon, but this is one of the many short interludes that I have just left.
Come the last day of the tour for the cousins, and everyone is gripped by a visit to the genocide and concentration camp of Majdanek. It is Benji who however is traumatized by the same.
But he is quickly cheered up by a rather warm farewell bestowed on him by James, the character played by Sharpe with an uncanny understanding of the needs of the character, being more than a remnant of season two of The White Lotus.
Returning to the screen after a long break and as Grey, he also gets several scenes as the group member who creates the most unexpected closeness with Benji. So when she follows up that her daughter has married a very rich man and she can’t even pretend to have a genuine conversation, Benji says, “Ya, money is really like fucking heroin, but maybe for dullard kind of people.”
The whole cast is solid. It is nevertheless necessary to single out Egyiawan who played a very different role, always the quiet observer, waiting in the wings to embrace the American but in a different way to what can be expected from one raised in America.
By now it seems evident to the audiences that the central story is about the changing relationship between David and Benji, where the former is often frustrated and at times enraged at his cousin who he adores. It’s done with great care and does not seek to milk emotion especially when the audience learns of Benji’s rather disturbing secret.
And their growing conflicts builds up to a rather beautiful moment when the two of them smoke a blunt on the rooftop of a hotel. Ben, for instance, confesses that he hates and admires Benji at the same time: his natural skill to charm women. If it was only that. If only it was that.
It is cinematographer Michal Dymek who makes fluid movement from the exquisite urban visual style with which he shot Jerzy Skolimoswskis visually mesmerizing EO, to the sprawl of green fields on the way to the cousins grandmother`s house. This change however appears to also firm up a new resolve between them, that is felt from the end of their journey and all the way to their emotional goodbye at the airport in New York.
Eisenberg’s first feature film as a director, When You Finish Saving the World, received reviews that were divided in opinions but had potential in them. In A Real Pain, he shows the ability to make good decisions as well as handle comedy and drama in a film fully packed with emotions where none feels forced.
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- Genre: Comedy, Drama
- Country: United States
- Director: Jesse Eisenberg
- Cast: Kieran Culkin, Jesse Eisenberg, Olha Bosova