A Real Pain
It’s a little bit funny, this feeling inside…Imagine the Holdovers crossed with The Way and mixed with zesty humour, people observation and deep sadness…Then you have the beautiful drama that is A Real Pain, which feels very much like a fly-on-the-wall documentary.
This fictional (and yet not) sort of a docu-drama explores the journey of the two Polish-American Kaplan cousins who return to Poland to revisit family sites and explore their Jewish history. One cousin, Benji, (Kieran Culkin!) is bright, breezy, lights up a room…and yet as the drama goes on, has some deeply hidden pain and self-destructive tendencies. He also really, really cares about many people, places and things. The other cousin is a loving family man David (Jesse Eisenberg); a carer, a worrier, perhaps put upon and overlooked. Yet, he also has deep care and concerns… about his cousin Benji...which breaks out over a meal.
Nor is baby ever put in a corner as Jennifer Grey appears as one of the tour party — a luminous rich woman exploring her own pain, Marcia! Equally starry is one of the producers in the end credits — Emma Stone! Equally enjoy Will Sharpe, the great Liza Sadovy and Kurt Egyiawan all being on the screen at the same time. Terrific character-driven performances all round.
Gently and carefully, the film explores faith, culture, the pain of the past — and of the present — and we journey with them. The gorgeous cinematography loves to play with contrasts and textures, constantly alerting us to sad and defiant remnants of what was, the unhidden hidden of formerly thriving and vibrant Jewish communities. In a sober and horrific moment we join the group as they visit a concentration camp — unusually intact compared to other structures. As with Zone of Interest, Michal Dymek’s cinematography carefully draws us into a horror of extermination. The real gut-punch is having observed sad piles of shoes revealing the individuality of the murdered, we see the expressions of the tour group observing the crematorium and then horribly realise that a neat curved pile next to it is the dreadful remains of the murdered, a burial site. It’s when you see that pile of ashes, the endless pairs of shoes and boots (a defiant white kid leather pair popping out of the heap), the garish turquoise blue stains of Zyklon B gas on the walls that you start to get some sense of the horror. Even more horrifying was that the camp was very near to the city centre square — hidden in plain sight, and a horrible taunt to the once flourishing Jewish ghetto community, its places of business, worship, education and community within it. A way of life was being exterminated too.
Like The Holdovers, it’s about relationship, connection, feeling (even when feeling feels too much) and life affirming. There’s a beautiful moment when the Kaplans honour their departed Grandmother Dory by visiting her former home. It’s about the stories we tell now — and then, those that are passed down to us.
Emotionally it leaves you worrying about Benji at the end and longing for him to go back to his cousin’s family — and leave his stone at the door too, to say that he was here (and is still here). But it’s also made you laugh before you start worrying as the cousins scamper gleefully around a train evading the ticket inspector and Benji generously shares stuff which isn’t his! Enjoy too some terrific throwaway lines, such as riches being for boring people, and a gorgeous Chopin score.
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