A REAL PAIN. Eisenberg’s Poland [REVIEW]

If Hollywood comes to Poland, it’s usually for one reason: to make a film about the Holocaust. We may bristle at this fact, but the Holocaust remains our primary cultural export. The list of names isn’t long but is quite prestigious: Steven Spielberg, Roman Polanski, Jonathan Glazer. Now Jesse Eisenberg joins them. The difference is that in “Real Pain”, the Holocaust serves only as a pretext—a pretext to explore a strained family relationship and a journey that, as in any good road movie, proves to be more important than the destination.

The trip begins at JFK Airport in New York (played by the airport in Radom, Poland). It’s here that cousins David (Jesse Eisenberg) and Benji (Kieran Culkin) meet. Once inseparable, they are now on completely opposite ends of the life spectrum. David is a busy marketing professional with a wife and child, while Benji lives in his mother’s basement, watching TV and smoking weed. David is an introvert, trapped in a “jar labeled OCD,” while Benji is an extrovert showing clear signs of bipolar disorder. Though they may not realize it, they’re the perfect pair: each completes the other. They arrive in Poland to honor the memory of their late grandmother, a Jewish woman who survived the horrors of a concentration camp. However, the spirited Benji quickly disrupts the trip’s structure, turning a carefully planned heritage tour into a unique situational comedy—one where most of the punchlines end with a lump in the viewer’s throat.

“Real Pain” holds special significance for Jesse Eisenberg, who takes on the roles of director, writer, producer, and actor, as the film is deeply personal to him. Eisenberg first visited Poland in 2008 for sentimental reasons: he wanted to see his ancestors’ homeland and visit Krasnystaw, the town where his beloved grandmother was born. In “Real Pain”, Eisenberg draws heavily from this experience. The tenement building where his mother’s family lived before the war “plays” itself in the film. The cities on screen—Warsaw, Lublin, and Krasnystaw—are ones Eisenberg visited in 2008 with his wife.

By fictionalizing his memories, Eisenberg occasionally strikes a universal chord. True to its title, “Real Pain” becomes a film about suffering, specifically how it is experienced. How should one act on a group tour of a concentration camp? How does one cope with the relentless wave of hard truths? Suffer in silence, or share the burden, seeking comfort from others? Eisenberg, to his credit, doesn’t provide a clear answer. David and Benji are fully realized characters (wonderfully portrayed by Eisenberg and Culkin) but also serve as models representing two very different ways of handling the emotional weight of a Holocaust-focused trip and, more broadly, life’s hardships. If there’s a message in “Real Pain”, it might be: suffering is subjective. No pain is—excuse the phrasing—more “real” than any other, and each person must deal with it in their own way.

From a Polish viewer’s perspective, the film’s locations are the most intriguing aspect. Apparently, it took a foreign filmmaker to finally portray modern Poland on screen as it actually looks, without the glamorous veneer of romantic comedies or the gritty dirt of Wojciech Smarzowski’s dramas. In “Real Pain”, we see a country of contrasts: sleek skyscrapers alongside crumbling tenements, big cities alongside small towns, luxury hotels alongside overgrown Jewish cemeteries. The film’s most impressive sequence, however, takes place not in Warsaw or Lublin but on an InterCity train. With Michał Dymek’s camera following the characters, we’re struck by the familiar hallways and seats, as Hollywood stars are framed in a setting we know from everyday life.

If “Real Pain” were a mediocre film, I’d say it’s worth seeing for this unique and almost surreal experience alone. Fortunately, it’s quite the opposite. Eisenberg’s film is both moving and funny, superbly written (it won the Waldo Salt Screenwriting Award at Sundance) and equally well-acted (there are even whispers of a potential Oscar nomination for Culkin). It’s a dramedy on par with, perhaps, the best works of Alexander Payne or Noah Baumbach. Simply put, one of the best films of the year.