Review of A Real Pain, directed by Jesse Eisenberg

If you’re new here and found this blog through the mysterious powers of the Internet, welcome! My name is Ashley, and I’m a dedicated reader and movie watcher who thought to turn this website into a little digital archive of sorts.

I was watching and reading so much that I wanted to keep track of it all, so I began blogging as a way to keep these books as memories somewhat forever.

That said, I recently fell into a period of unemployment, and this blog was a solace for me. Not only was it a way to make a little bit of money when there was nothing else coming my way really, but I found, after getting my finances in order, that I enjoyed sitting down to write blog posts when I had nothing else to do in my day.

For a while, I worked as a film critic professionally at an online outlet. While it was fun to go out to the film festivals and interview people that I never would have met in real life otherwise, I got a bit tired of staying on top of the new releases and decided to start my own thing: aka this blog.

Once I quit my film critic job I really fell off of the new releases, but with all of this new free time during what I dubbed the funemployment era, I decided to get back on top of it. I watched A Real Pain as soon as it dropped on Hulu one lonely Monday morning.

Let’s get into the review! I know these introductions can get to be too much sometimes, so let’s get into the main part of this post.

Two Jewish cousins go on a heritage tour to Europe, visiting Holocaust sites, but have to confront both their past and present.

Our two main characters in this movie are Benji and David. They come all the way from New York City for a heritage tour, as they’re both Jewish, and they want to see their grandmother’s childhood home. From the beginning, we can see Benji is a bit of a loose cannon and a free spirit, while David is quiet and reserved, the more rational of the two.

David clearly is having trouble dealing with Benji’s free nature and mental health issues, while Benji is openly criticizing David for becoming more tight knit and boring basically. The duo arrives in Warsaw, and at the hotel Benji gets his weed package from the front desk (he apparently mailed it there) and they meet their tour group members.

They’re from all over the USA and have differing reasons for being there, but most interesting is the Rwandan genocide survivor who converted to Judaism and wanted to find solace on the tour, and their British tour guide named James. The group goes out the next morning to different sites in Warsaw, and David is mortified when Benji wants to reenact the Warsaw Uprising in front of the grouo.

When they’re on the train the next day, going to Lublin, Benji continues to embarrass David further when he remarks they shouldn’t be going first class on a Holocaust tour, as their ancestors suffered on this same route. Benji also doesn’t wake David up at the right stop, so they have to get back on the train and meet with the group there.

It’s in this city Benji openly comes after their tour guide verbally, saying that he doesn’t meet the emotional connection to what he’s talking about, and that he doesn’t entirely have the facts right. While the other tour group members were weary of him, they warm up to Benji after this, which makes David even more embarrassed of his cousin.

They all go to dinner that night, and Benji continues making out there comments, especially when it comes to his family. Members of the tour end up telling him to politely knock it off, and when he goes away to the bathroom, David goes off about how Benji tried to kill himself earlier in the year, and that their relationship is strained because of Benji’s mental health problems. They then hear Benji playing the piano when David finishes getting everything off of his chest.

Next up: everyone is going to a concentration camp (Majdanek). The group moves through the surviving structures, while Benji starts crying when he sees all of the piles of shoes from the camp’s victims. Benji and David prepare to go separate ways after this, and James thanks Benji. Turns out he’s the first person to ever give him feedback, and he appreciates it.

The duo prepare to go their grandmother’s home, but not before smoking some of Benji’s weed and having a heart to heart. David admits he can’t imagine someone like Benji, so full of life, killing themselves, which is part of his disconnect lately. They leave for their grandmother’s childhood home the next day, and Benji recalls a story where his grandmother slapped him and he felt like the world was so much clearer after that.

The two try to leave some visitation stones at the home, but then are forced to take them away when a neighbor complains. They leave for New York, and Benji goes off on his own way. Before he leaves, David slaps him in the face, then goes home and puts his stone at the doorway of his house. Benji doesn’t leave the airport, and watches the people all around him.

Overall Thoughts

I quite enjoyed this movie a lot! I honestly went into it completely blind and didn’t even look at the synopsis, and it was a heartwarming story in the end. Benji’s character is the most interesting to me, but the heart of the story is the fact that the two cousins had this kind of relationship.

It’s interesting to watch this unfold in the context of a Holocaust remembrance tour, especially as they have to come to realize their shared past with everyone here is one full of trauma. This isn’t entirely the focus of the movie, but it proves to be layered issue once you want to dig deeper into the film’s themes and messages.

I think this is a movie that’s worth revisiting somewhere deeper down the road, but not any time soon. I do feel like the writing was quite good, and we watch it for the characters involved, but it wasn’t extremely compelling in the sense that anything happens. It moves slowly, like time, which is fine. Some might find it boring because of that, but coming back to it later in life will provide more insight.

Go watch it if you haven’t already and want to. I think this is worth seeing at least once if you’re into the plot, themes, or context of the film.

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