Jesse Eisenberg created the film “A Real Pain” to depict the emotional distress between two Jewish American cousins touring modern-day Poland as they learn more about the trauma of the Holocaust.
“I wanted to talk about that pain (between cousins) but set against the backdrop of something so much more objectively worse, like World War Two trauma,” Eisenberg said.
He wanted to pose an important question to both the audience and to himself.
“What pain is valid? Are we supposed to take these two young men seriously, even though their pain could not compare to massive, mass-scale terror, or are we supposed to dismiss them because their lives are irrelevant against the backdrop?” he added.
“A Real Pain” is distributed by Searchlight Pictures, a unit of Walt Disney, and arrives in theaters on Friday. The film follows different-tempered cousins David, played by Eisenberg, and Benji, played by Kieran Culkin, as they reunite for a group tour of Poland to learn more about their grandmother and Jewish history.
The movie also stars Will Sharpe as James, the group tour guide, along with Jennifer Grey, Kurt Egyiawan, Liza Sadovy, and Daniel Oreskes, who play members of the tour group.
Emotional tensions between family members
Things take a turn when the emotional tension between the cousins rises, and they work to process their complex feelings about their family.
It wasn’t until watching himself play Benji on-screen that Culkin truly analyzed his character.
“Knowing somebody in my life that's pretty similar to him (Benji)” helped Culkin understand the character in a deeper way.
For Sharpe, Benji serves as a big influence on the rest of the characters as they go through the historic tour.
“I think Benji, Kieran's character, impacts each of our characters sort of along the film's journey, and often he sort of does it in almost quite a competitive way,” said Sharpe, who has also appeared in the TV series "The White Lotus."
Benji challenges the way James conducts the tour, which makes him think about his job in a different way, Sharpe added.
By contrast, Sharpe sees David, Eisenberg's character, both “fascinated and frustrated” by his cousin’s constant transparency and outspokenness.
A story of people who are healing
For Grey, the film comes down to a story of people who are healing.
“The cure for pain is healing, and it doesn't mean it goes away. It just means there's perhaps some mitigating of the pain, some shift in perspective,” she said.
For her, from the horror of the Holocaust to the struggles that the cousins face in modern day, the movie is about the overall pains of life.