‘A Real Pain’ Is A Mirror To Life’s Real Pains & How We Don’t Deal With Them [Review]
Because when you’re in real pain, sometimes the light scares you so much that you’d rather stay in the dark.
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[Spoilers ahead.]
This is a film that traps you in one of those full-circle moments that make you feel like you’re on a hamster wheel of grief, and you never get off of it. If you’re hoping for a cathartic breakthrough, a moment where the character finally steps into the light and breaks free, this isn’t that movie.
Because when you’re in real pain, sometimes the light scares you so much that you’d rather stay in the dark.
A Real Pain is more than a movie on a screen. It’s a mirror that reflects our own ways of processing grief and trauma in real life.
The movie begins (and ends) abruptly, in true slice-of-life style, dropping us straight into the story. David (Jesse Eisenberg) is running late to meet his cousin Benji (Kieran Culkin, who won both an Oscar and a Golden Globe for his performance) at the airport, as they embark on a Jewish heritage tour of Poland.
David says their recently deceased grandmother survived the Holocaust thanks to “a thousand miracles.” Now, they’re heading to the house where she grew up, but what starts as a simple trip turns into an unexpectedly emotional rollercoaster – both funny and deeply moving in its take on the Jewish diaspora.
Eisenberg not only stars in the film but also wrote and directed it, and you can feel him wrestling with his own complicated feelings about generational trauma and Holocaust tourism.
He’s even said in interviews that the idea for the film first came from a bizarre ad he saw for “Holocaust tours, with lunch.”
By the end, the film resists any neat resolutions. As they return home, David invites Benji to share a cab back to Brooklyn, hoping to spend more time together with his wife and son. He declines, in real Benji fashion, playing it off super casually all the while hiding deep sadness behind his eyes.
When they land at the airport, Benji says he’s actually gonna “hang around for a bit.”
“At the airport?”
“Yeah,” Benji says. “You meet the craziest people here.”
Airports are meant for passing through – places where people arrive and depart, not somewhere to settle. No one lingers unless they have to.
The fact that Benji would rather hang around an airport than spend time at his cousin’s home says everything about him. He’s in constant flight mode – mentally checked out, always running from anything that forces him to face reality.
“You always used to feel everything.”
One of Benji’s biggest problems with David is that he feels like David is just somebody he used to know. David isn’t the same guy who used to stay out all night, get wasted, and light up whenever the moment called for it. He’s changed – grown up, maybe – but to Benji, it just feels like distance.
If Benji is in flight mode, David is in fight mode. He’s fidgety, super defensive, and always has an answer for everything. Benji even comments on David’s “super nice feet”, as if to imply that David’s the more stable one, and the one that always stands his ground (and could probably sell feet pics if strapped for cash).
The idea of “baggage”
Despite how different the cousins are from each other, the thread that connects them is more than their tragic Jewish heritage. They both carry heavy baggage – literal and emotional – lugging their backpacks and the weight of their worlds without ever stopping to unpack it.
Benji’s constant need to stay intoxicated is a cry for help, just as much as David’s dependence on OCD meds to function.
On the surface, David seems like the one who has it together, but the film gives us fleeting moments where he experiences real, unfiltered joy – often in the very situations he tries so hard to avoid. “I love him, I hate him, I want to kill him, I want to be him,” is how David describes Benji, and it’s how he feels about himself.
It’s only fitting that A Real Pain is a road movie. We never see these characters settle. They’re on a journey, and we get to be a part of it for a little while.
Stones and slaps
It’s throughout this journey that we begin to understand the boys. It almost feels like we’re part of the tour group, among the other members: a recent divorcee, a Jewish convert, an old ‘boring’ couple, and the tour guide, James (Will Sharpe), who loves his job.
In one of Benji’s many outbursts, he snaps at James, telling him to ease up on the “facts” and bring more emotion into the experience. Later, James suggests that the group take part in the Jewish tradition of placing stones on graves during their visit to the oldest cemetery in Poland.
The boys also do this at the doorstep of their grandmother’s old house before they’re shooed away by an annoyed neighbour.
This tradition not only speaks to their heritage, but also says a lot about their hardened hearts.
Benji recalls a time when their grandmother openly slapped him in her favourite restaurant, and how that made him feel good that she cared about him more than what anyone around thought about her.
Later, when David playfully recreates that slap, Benji’s unfazed. He doesn’t feel, or doesn’t allow himself to feel loved again.
Or it could also just mean that he enjoys getting stoned way too much.
“You light up a room, and then you sh** on everyone in it.”
A Real Pain leaves us wondering what is the real pain, or who is in real pain. Is it David, Benji, or us? Is it the pain of losing a grandmother or the pain of losing hope?
Which one cuts deeper?
A Real Pain is playing in selected cinemas nationwide.
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