‘A Real Pain’ Review: A Haunting Portrait of Grief and Growth
By Catherine Murphy
Searchlight Pictures
Jesse Eisenberg's A Real Pain delves into the ways in which grief impacts us all differently. Eisenberg portrays how we can either celebrate the millions of miracles that led to us or see the millions of ways the world still needs to heal. Cousins David (Jesse Eisenberg) and Benji (Kieran Culkin) travel to Poland to visit their grandmother’s homeland in the wake of her passing. In addition to confronting the loss of a family member, the two face the relics of the Holocaust their ancestors survived. For Benji, an overwhelming feeling of guilt arises. Why is he allowed to benefit from the suffering faced by those who came before him? But for David, the tour evokes a sense of gratefulness and pride. He acknowledges the resilience of his grandmother and the good fortune that led to his existence. It takes this journey for the pair to reconcile with their past and each other.
Eisenberg has discussed that the title A Real Pain comes from the film's investigation into what pain is. It questions how to hold the weight of multiple pains when some are global and others interpersonal. What significance is Benji and David’s loss of their grandmother with the backdrop of the Holocaust? Then, there is even Benji’s pain within himself. In one of the emotional heights of the film, the tour sets down for a group dinner. As they all share stories of their ancestors immigrating to America, many during the war, David and Benji open up about their own grandmother. After reminiscing on her strength, Benji leaves the table and David begins to wonder about this “real pain.” Looking at all of their ancestors,“How could a person who’s the product of a thousand … miracles overdose on a bottle of sleeping pills?” In short, he’s questioning how their grandmother and a long line of powerful individuals could result in the troubled Benji.
Searchlight Pictures
The film is stunning both visually and acoustically. The score is a dreamy classical rendition of Chopin, who is fittingly a Polish composer. Similarly, the cinematographer, Michał Dymek, hails from the film’s central Polish city, Warsaw. It’s this personal touch that shines through most clearly. Although pain is the titular emotion, there is as much attention to the tragedy entrenched in the city as there is to life. Benji and David wonder what their lives might have been like had their grandmother not been forced to flee Poland, and with the cinematography it's not difficult to imagine it. The film alternates between moments of extreme passion and bouts of serenity, but even the passion is filled with love, and the serenity feels chilling. Benji yells over how the tour is going, then he plays a jazzy melody on piano in the restaurant. David and Benji share a moment of love and a blunt on their hotel rooftop. Then they visit a concentration camp. The love is as deep as the grief.
Searchlight Pictures
Culkin and Eisenberg give career-defining performances. Both play characters we’ve seen them in before, Culkin being erratic and expressive while Eisenberg is more reserved, but what separates this from their past roles is the room they’re given to shine. Although the film certainly has an excellent ensemble cast, the focus lies on these two characters. There isn’t a single moment in the film where you don’t feel the suffocating enormity of these men’s emotions, the sadness or the joy. They ride the thin line of levity and reverence, of melodrama and sentimentality. At its heart, the film is about real pain, from pain at its largest scale to that inside ourselves. A Real Pain attempts to reveal how to hold these incompatible weights simultaneously. What meaning can your personal grief hold when we are face to face with the genocide? Eisenberg suggests there’s space for both. We don’t have to give up our personal struggles to mourn the losses of the world.
