There’s this strange compulsion by many to respond to someone’s discomfort with “everyone has problems.” Whatever the intention, all it ever does is minimize what a person is feeling with the implication that “why should someone be feeling badly about something if someone else has it worse?”. Except feelings are valid, even if they are inappropriate in size for the actual issue, and deserve to be felt and identified. More than that, just because someone is troubled, doesn’t mean that their experience isn’t any more important to feel and empathize with than someone else who may be troubled in a different way. A community that exists in this way only ends up devaluing emotion and preventing growth and empathy. This is a major component of actor/writer/director Jesse Eisenberg’s (When You Finish Saving the World) sophomore film, A Real Pain, a familial dramedy that utilizes Jewish trauma as an entry point for interpersonal conflict. After screening in theaters, it’s now available on digital and is coming to physical formats with a single behind-the-scenes featurette.
If you’re interested in learning about the film in a spoiler-free capacity, head over to EoM Contributor Justin Waldman’s initial A Real Pain theatrical release review.
Director Jesse Eisenberg on the set of A REAL PAIN. Photo Courtesy of Searchlight Pictures. © 2024 Searchlight Pictures All Rights Reserved.
After the death of their grandmother, cousins David and Benji (Eisenberg and Kieran Culkin) travel to Poland to take part in a Holocaust tour and visit their grandmother’s home. While journeying with several others of varying ages and connections to Judaism and the Holocaust, the two are given the opportunity to confront things about themselves they’d been denying.
L-R: Kieran Culkin as Benji and Jesse Eisenberg as David in A REAL PAIN. Photo Courtesy of Searchlight Pictures. © 2024 Searchlight Pictures All Rights Reserved.
With the film already available on Hulu and digital, let’s explore the sole bonus feature, the 19-minute “Beautiful Fate: Making A Real Pain.” Amid talking head interviews with Eisenberg and cast members Culkin, Jennifer Grey (Wish You Were Here; Dirty Dancing), and Will Sharpe (The House), home audiences are guided through details of the making of the film which include behind-the-scenes video and still photos that appear in style and quality of old Polaroids. We learn what inspired Eisenberg from his own life to tell this story, the experience Eisenberg and Culkin had as collaborators on the project (Culkin had to adapt to taking notes from his fellow actor where Eisenberg had to embrace Culkin’s improv spirit that led to startling moments that made the final version), what it was like for the cast to shoot at the Majdanek State Museum, and the correlation between the historical influence of the location and the central narrative. Frankly, where the film left this reviewer quite dry, the featurette so clearly connects dots that waterworks accompanied the closing credits. For those who similarly felt strangely distanced from A Real Pain, the featurette is sure to enhance the film in ways one wishes the film did all in its own.
Director Jesse Eisenberg on the set of A REAL PAIN. Photo Courtesy of Searchlight Pictures. © 2024 Searchlight Pictures All Rights Reserved.
As this home release review is based on a digital edition provided by Searchlight Pictures, there’s no way to speak on the quality of the picture or audio with real authority as a streaming edition is at the mercy of the digital access point (iTunes, Movies Anywhere, Fandango, etc.), the device(s) used to watch the film, and internet provider. That said, having viewed the film through iTunes on a 4K UHD television through a 5.1 surround sound system, there are no evident issues with the digital edition that create cause for concern or warning.
L-R: Kieran Culkin as Benji and Jesse Eisenberg as David in A REAL PAIN. Photo Courtesy of Searchlight Pictures. © 2024 Searchlight Pictures All Rights Reserved.
In terms of the film itself, there appears to be difficulty between what it seeks to do versus what it does. Consider that David is presented as uptight, having internalized his anxiety, compared to Benji, who is presented as far more open, engaging with the world with a rawness that causes him to oscillate between unbridled empathy and joy and profound sadness. At first, this is meant to set them up as an odd couple on a trip, with each learning something from the other. This does occur with David taking moments, at least twice, to stare at his feet while in bed after Benji comments that they remind him of their grandmother’s. As David stares at his feet, the camera making sure to take a long pause over them, a sense arises of David having not thought of himself as an extension of his grandmother, someone he felt close to and had, perhaps, up until that moment, not realized this physical connection that tethers them even after her passing. Except Benji has no moment like this wherein he recognizes or even seems to acknowledge a shortcoming. Heck, when Sharpe’s tour guide James goes to say goodbye to Benji and thank him for the brisk-yet-honest feedback Benji gave at a cemetery that James treated a tad too academically, Benji’s dialogue implies he doesn’t recall the interaction. Is he being modest, underplaying an outburst that, while appropriate in acknowledging James’s shortcomings, was incredibly harsh; or does he only engage in the moments as they happen and not really retain them? If it’s the latter, it speaks to a larger issue that Benji’s experiencing that no one, not even David, gets to understand by the end of the film. David does tell the group (and the audience) about Benji’s prior suicide attempt and how it hurt him (David) and he (David) even takes an opportunity before the end of the trip to confront Benji about it, but at no point is there a sense that Benji is on a path toward healing. Instead, all we really get is David coming home with a renewed sense of connection to his family (extended and immediate), while Benji just sits in an airport for … reasons. I phrase it this way because the logical presumption is that Benji doesn’t have a place to go to like David does, but we don’t really get to understand what’s next for Benji any more than Benji does, which makes one feel an incompleteness with the character who didn’t really get an arc of any kind compared to his cousin.
L-R: Director Jesse Eisenberg and Kieran Culkin on the set of A REAL PAIN. Photo Credit: Agata Grzybowska/Courtesy of Searchlight Pictures. © 2024 Searchlight Pictures All Rights Reserved.
“Come be a part of the family.”
I’ve had these seven words rattling around in my head since before New Year’s after a relative said that to me at the end of a call. The intention is kind, an invitation to join my relatives as they ring in the new year. It’s welcoming, inviting, an open-arms statement — all the things one wants to hear from their relatives. Yet it rattles around in my brain in the same way that David and Benji never truly resolve themselves beyond an acknowledgment of affection. The two cousins live close, but not close enough for hangouts to be easy, especially with David’s child taken into consideration (anyone with children understands the complications involved of schedules, etc.). After a few days on the trip to get the rust off, the two are a charming pair, their love and affection evident but not enough to resolve the distance between them brought about by life. So these words rattle around in my head because the other way to read it is that I, and my family, are not part of the family now. That due to our needs currently of masking due to medical necessity, something which my relatives don’t do, we are making a choice to stay away from them. That *we* are choosing to mask and, therefore, cannot be a part of the family. No one said we enjoy masking, find it comfortable or pleasant, or that we enjoy the absence of our family, but they, too, are making a choice to avoid us because, in the opposing view, putting on a mask is too uncomfortable for them to make space for us, even just in brief, so we can come to them (or them to us). David tries to hold space for Benji and, yes, by Eisenberg’s own admission on the featurette, he does so because David views Benji’s outward expressions to be a sharing of pain that should be reserved. David acknowledges that everyone has pain and, therefore, why should folks center themselves around their pain. Conversely, he also acknowledges, perhaps more so than Benji who so openly speaks what’s on his mind, that these two cousins are the product of a series of miracles given that their grandmother survived the Holocaust and, therefore, their lives should matter — a significant reason why Benji trying to kill himself hurts as much as it does. Benji’s life is a miracle, as are all lives, born out of a series of miracles that led to their arrival on Earth. Thus, with all of these miracles in play, each life matters, each life is connected, and, as a result, one is not merely a “part of a family” by proximity, but by blood, by shared experience, and, one hopes, love.
L-R: Kieran Culkin as Benji, Jennifer Gray as Marcia, Jesse Eisenberg as David, Kurt Egyiawan as Eloge, David Oreskes as Mark, and Will Sharpe as James in A REAL PAIN, Photo Courtesy of Searchlight Pictures. © 2024 Searchlight Pictures All Rights Reserved.
There are a lot of things to enjoy about A Real Pain. Culkin’s performance as Benji is truly provocative and emotional, especially against Eisenberg’s more still representation of David. But between the sense that the story just ends without any real resolution and the inclusion of the Holocaust trip often feeling more like emotional bait than being tied to anything thematic beyond the single story David tells about “the miracle,” the whole tends to feel quite dry in its reaching for emotion. It’s really not until Eisenberg discusses how the film intends to juxtapose David, Benji, and their grandmother’s experiences to explore what “a real pain” actually is in the featurette that any notion of connection truly comes into focus. Bonus features can create opportunities for movies to become richer through their exploration, but the film should be able to rightly stand on its own – something which, even on a second watch, it doesn’t seem to do at all, trading in imagery and metaphor over concrete resolution that these two characters so desperately need. Because if the true intent of the ending is to illustrate how David achieved catharsis and is potentially going to be less anxious and more present while at home, that’s excellent, but at what cost to Benji who seems no more full or transformed by the experience? The frustration, narratively speaking, is a real pain indeed.
A Real Pain Special Features:
- Beautiful Fate: Making A Real Pain (19:46)
Available on VOD and digital December 31st, 2024.
Available on Hulu January 16th, 2025.
Available on Blu-ray and DVD February 4th, 2025.
For more information, head to the official Searchlight Pictures A Real Pain webpage.
Final Score: 3 out of 5.
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Categories: Home Release, Home Video, Recommendation, Reviews, streaming
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