A couple of years now since his directorial/screenwriting debut When You Finish Saving the World, Jesse Eisenberg comes out with his second directed and written film: A Real Pain.
The film tells the story about two Jewish cousins, David (Jesse Eisenberg) and Benji (Kieran Culkin), who travel to Poland together after the passing of their Grandma Dory, a Holocaust survivor. They decide to attend a facilitated tour by a British man named James (Will Sharpe) along with four other individuals before visiting the home Grandma Dory grew up in.
Out of the four companions on the tour, the person who stands out to me is Eloge (Kurt Egyiawan). He is a survivor of the Rwandan genocide who converted to Judaism after his escape. It frustrates me when he says, “I’m a convert, obviously,” when he introduces himself, because there are plenty of people of many racial backgrounds who aren’t only converting but are actually born into the faith too. It’s not “obvious.” However, it makes sense that he would introduce himself that way amongst a white non-Jewish tour guide and the rest of the group being white Jews.
The film then becomes a gateway into a conversation about Black-Jew solidarity.
When Eloge tells the group about he and his family’s experience with the genocide, Benji reacts wholeheartedly with his voice and body to let Eloge know that he feels his pain. It then makes sense when the two men and an older woman on the tour, Marsha (Jennifer Grey) talk about the importance of really reckoning with the past and presence of pain in the world after witnessing sites of war in Poland. In both scenes, David is visibly uncomfortable, and even names his discomfort with these conversations. Not because the pain doesn’t matter but more so because of how insignificant pain may be on a larger scale because of how everyone endures it in similar ways.
We especially see this discomfort come into play when the whole group has dinner together to share about the struggles of immigrants shifting from generation to generation. When Benji takes offense to David quoting their grandmother about how third generation immigrants live in their mother’s basement and storms off, David talks about how much he loves and hates his cousin simultaneously. How can he be part of the lineage of someone who survived through what their Grandma Dory calls “a thousand miracles” and still want to attempt to take your own life?
This is a similar instance we see in Black immigrant communities and Black communities that were born in the United States. How can you be depressed when your ancestors escaped genocide? How can you be depressed when your ancestors went through so much worse in regards to enslavement and Jim Crow?
The scene that stands out the most to me, however, is when the group visits the Old Jewish Cemetery in Prague. James and Eloge engage in a conversation about their fascination with the headstones’ architecture and history, and it makes Benji upset. Benji wants this sacred space to be treated with more respect than an average tourist site. Benji asks Eloge to consider his own family history in regards to what it’s like to be in a space with real dead bodies and calls out James for not facilitating the tour in a way that allows them to interact with fellow Polish Jews in the area. Although Kieran Culkin himself isn’t Jewish — and Jesse Eisenberg is — what his character talks about resonates.
In response to Benji’s feedback, James offers a moment of silence and allows group members to pick up stones to place on one of the headstones as a reminder that they were there to remember, a common Jewish practice when visiting gravesites. This inspires David to convince Benji to allow the two of them to place a stone at Grandma Dory’s house in the climax of the film. Even though her body isn’t buried there, it’s to let her spirit know that they remember her.
In most cemeteries of enslaved Black people or Black people who served in the Civil War or any historical site of Black people who have died, there isn’t enough signage or attentive tour guides to remind visitors to treat those sites with respect and reverence. It’s also important to note how often Black and Jewish cemeteries get destroyed or vandalized by racists and antisemites. A film such as A Real Pain can encourage conversations amongst Black folks and Jewish folks about honoring our cultural death sites and how to facilitate intentional pilgrimages to those cultural death sites.
Clearly, although the film mostly centers Benji and David’s relationship as cousins, the film does a great job in addressing the external and internal ways pain affects all of us. I also appreciate Eisenberg being intentional and realistic enough in including a character such as Eloge so that the conversations about Black-Jew solidarity doesn’t stop. Black people are capable of antisemitism, Jews are capable of Black racism, both groups need to do a better job in recognizing how Blackness and Jewishness are not mutually exclusive to a great deal of people. A Real Pain is a great first step in those contemporary conversations.
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