I’d almost forgotten the transformative power of art. Most movies don’t do it for me anymore. And though I’m fully prepared to blame myself for that – I’m too old, it’s time for a new generation of voices – I know another part of it is the careful storytelling that must exist in Hollywood now. It’s hostage video movies where you can feel the fear coming off the screen – will they make a “mistake” that will end in tears and agonizing think pieces with tweets generating ongoing hysteria?
But every so often, something shines through, and Jesse Eisenberg’s A Real Pain is one of those. Few actors can write, direct, and star in a movie and have it be this good, but Eisenberg has pulled it off. It isn’t just the showstopping, Oscar-worthy performance of Kieran Culkin that makes this film so good. It’s also Eisenberg’s own performance that never feels self-indulgent, nor does it shrink back as some directors do. By the film’s end, we know the two main characters so well that we’ve forgotten that one of the actors is famous for playing Roman Roy and the other for playing Mark Zuckerberg.
A Real Pain isn’t a complicated story. Eisenberg isn’t trying to make Citizen Kane. He’s trying to tell a story that brings together his love of art and his interest in human history. At first, it seems like a buddy movie with two cousins – Culkin as Benji and Eisenberg as David – meeting up to spend a week in Poland with a tour group and to visit the home of their recently deceased grandmother.
We don’t know what to make of Benji at first. He’s funny, slightly erratic, and unpredictable. The David’s role is to be the steady hand that helps guide the ship through the storm. He’s the boring one. The married one. The employed one. Benji, on the other hand, is the bright light, the one with charisma but also the one who can’t quite hold it together.
It isn’t until Benji really begins to derail that the whole truth of their relationship unfolds: their past together, how they could not stay connected as their lives moved on, and how hard it’s been for Benji to survive like a normal person.
But Benji isn’t normal. He isn’t made that way. That’s what makes him so captivating. He’s always dancing at the edge of a volcano. He is always taking things too far. Something in all of us is drawn to that kind of light, even if we should know better. Benji isn’t drawn to the dark side. He isn’t a bad person. He feels too deeply, and he can’t rid himself of the memory of his own history, even if it happened before he was born.
While they’re touring Poland, the ominous but inevitable collision with a concentration camp looms large. Even if we think we’re prepared for it, we never are. The gas stains. The ovens. The shoes. The human ash. Benji absorbs it all, especially knowing his grandmother barely escaped. It isn’t that it doesn’t hit David hard, it’s just that it wrecks Benji in a way he may never recover from.
The film’s final shot brings home what this film is really about. It’s like the last shot in The 400 Blows – there is nowhere to go. The only answer is to be still. Benji is caught in stillness, too, and we know for him there is no escape from the “real pain” he can’t shake.
We can’t erase our history. It’s in our epigenome, real-time gene editing influenced by the trauma our ancestors suffered: the potato famine, World Wars I and II, and, yes, the Holocaust. The genes adjust to deal with these traumas, and then they are passed down to future generations. We must then live with whatever our parents and grandparents gave us in ways we can’t explain or never fully understand.
Eisenberg has knocked it out of the park with A Real Pain and made one of the year’s best films. Hopefully, the film will find an audience beyond the awards circuit. But for whatever it’s worth, it’s a strong “awards player.” An easy prediction for Best Picture, Screenplay, Actor, Supporting Actor, and maybe even Director.
At times, this film festival in the mountains of Telluride feels so full of bullshit you could slice it with a knife. Usually, around this time, I am bombarded with emails from publicists asking me if I’ve seen their movie or if I’d like to sit down with one of the actors.
But this year, they’ve decided I do not matter because I’ve been branded “toxic,” and no one would put my name on a blurb. All because I humanized a group of people I was not supposed to humanize. A journalist wrote about it, And it spooked the tiny bubble of Oscar publicity. That’s how easy it is to slip into dehumanization – when it’s too scary not to. To align on the side of hatred, no matter how they’ve rationalized it in their minds, is how you survive. That’s why it goes on.
Dehumanization of the kind we saw during the Holocaust isn’t rare. It’s all too common. Those who engage in dehumanization of an entire group of people never think they’re doing anything wrong. They always feel justified. Ridding Germany of the Jews was part of Hitler’s horrendous plan to create his utopian vision, but the pattern plays out again and again, and is even playing out now by those who believe themselves to be the “good side.”
But it’s never the right side. Dehumanization is always wrong. It would be easier for David to abandon Benji, but he can’t. He wants to save him. They have something that connects them that is deeper than their history—it’s a tolerance for imperfect people, our saving grace. Aiming for perfection will always be a warning sign of a dangerous future.
It would be so easy for me to turn my back on all of it. But then I’m hit with a brilliant movie like A Real Pain, and just when I think I’m out, it pulls me back in.
