In 2014 Jesse Eisenberg premiered his second play, written and starring himself. It was titled The Revisionist and the autobiographical aspect was unavoidable: we came across a writer who, seeking to get out of his block, was going to visit his aunt, a Holocaust survivor, in Poland. This woman, played on stage by Vanessa Redgrave, could perhaps restore his ability to write meaningful things thanks to having experienced excessive suffering, which fascinated the protagonist while making him feel strangely guilty. The brutal experience of the Jewish people served as a catalyst for a strictly individual emotional journey.
Eisenberg, of course, has Polish ancestors. His family lived in Krasnystaw until World War II, and the story of The Revisionist It touched him so closely that he ended up participating in the same hesitant isolation of the protagonist: he did not hesitate to translate the play into Hebrew and go to perform it in Tel Aviv, in Israel, coinciding with one of many brutal episodes in the conflict with Palestine. It was the same time when Javier Bardem and Penelope Cruz were criticized in Hollywood for denouncing Israel’s genocide, but Eisenberg He barely addressed this issue publicly.. He preferred to say that “Israel is a wonderful country” and that his work “does not conflict with what people want to talk about now.”
It was the closest he had come to giving an opinion on the matter in a long time. Nor would he do so later when starring Endurancethe recreation of an episode of the French Resistance that involved several boyscouts Jews, although American Zionist Movement sponsor the project. Now that it premieres A Real Pain, his second film as a director, runs into this problem again, and on a much larger scale than with The Revisionist. Palestinian suffering reaches extreme and unbearable levels as A Real Pain has a leading role in the current race for the Oscar, and its plot turns out to revolve around two Jewish cousins who travel through Poland, in a tour about the Holocaust. During the entirety of his footage, no one utters the word “Israel.”
Understanding Jesse Eisenberg
Does this mean that A Real Pain Is it a dishonest movie? Not at all, in fact its narrative mechanism has such transparency as to allow—in the wake of The Revisionist—analyze what he proposes through Eisenberg’s subjectivity, generously open-ended. Eisenberg is a politically compromised figure by the narrow standards of the establishment American: an affinity with the Democratic Party about which he has already shown palpable concern because it is not enough. Here we can go to his debut feature film, When you finish saving the worldheadlined in 2022 by Julianne Moore and Finn Wolfhard.
When you finish saving the worldwithout being a particularly successful film, showed an unusual bravery when it came to examining the progressive myopias of its country, through the clash between an activist mother with an enormous ego and a frivolous (and equally egocentric) son worried about the fact that His silly love songs did not seduce the very smart and conscientious girl who was flirting with him. Around these two characters, Eisenberg explored narcissism as an original sin when facing the world with a decisive will, drawing an ethical landscape where the best thing that could happen was for these two egos to recognize and love each other.
This conclusion was not so much complacent as anguished: it seemed to arise from Eisenberg’s own torment and linked him hopelessly to the fictions with neurotic Jews that were so abundant in the United States during the 20th century. We are talking about Woody Allen, the protagonist of Portnoy’s Lament by Philip Roth or Jerry Seinfeld. Tense masculinities, hyper-aware (or apparently hyper-aware) of their selfishness, who believe they have explored all the rhetorical possibilities to understand existence before reaching the conclusion that they are alone and that perhaps it is enough for them to have a partner (or psychoanalyze themselves). What differentiates Eisenberg from this catalog of subjects is not, on the other hand, his fixation with the Holocaust—jokes about it are common—but the belief that this historical trauma holds the key to unraveling his life.
The Holocaust is something so incomprehensible and transcendent that any self-mockery around it is shipwrecked. It has the appearance of an immanent truth that dwarfs everything that surrounds it and, therefore, allows us to illuminate those certainties that have been so elusive to Eisenberg. It can offer determination, concreteness, identity, and disrupt diverse complexities around it that, by comparison, are only first world problems. So this may be why Eisenberg is so interested in him as a narrator, and it’s certainly the reason for his second film. Eisenberg once again plays an alter ego of himself, David, within a story that he himself has written and whose title could not be more revealing.
A Real Pain. A real, authentic pain. Is it a pain that David may have experienced as an affluent American citizen, or just the frivolous shadow of a pain that illustrates how detached he is from the history and suffering of his people? Is your anxiety disorder or potential family and professional problems up to par with this trauma? David, Eisenberg, asks himself this incessantly, and he also wonders if a tour for Poland, the land of ancestors who did suffer reallyI could clarify it for you.
One of the most powerful sequences of A Real Painwhat a remedy, then involves the protagonists’ visit to a Nazi concentration camp. Until then – and it will continue to be so – a musical bed made up of interpretations of Chopin as a distinguished Polish composer has been omnipresent, but for a few minutes everything is silent and we only see moved characters passing through the corridors and rooms of that place. They are definitely facing something bigger than themselves, only A Real Pain —and that is why it is ultimately such an intelligent film— disdains that problems can be reduced to unitary and resounding catharsis. He maintains instead that everything is transit, and that more revealing than an extermination camp should be the person Eisenberg has at his side. His cousin Benji, played by Kieran Culkin.
The story of two cousins
True to his character as a recluse in the ivory tower, Eisenberg assures that I hadn’t seen a single episode of Succession before signing Culkin as the co-star of A Real Pain. I was not aware of the existence of Roman Roy – a character for which Culkin has won the Golden Globe and the Emmy – although it is difficult to believe watching the film. Culkin repeats several of the mannerisms of the little Roy, captured by a strange and insolent spontaneity that only seeks, obviously, to camouflage his internal torture. has repeated the interpretation of Succession or not, these details come in handy for the character, and it is not surprising that they have made him an Oscar favorite.
Culkin is fantastic as David’s cousin, an absolutely broken person who craves the catharsis of a visit to Poland more virulently than Eisenberg’s character. What has definitely driven this trip is the death of their grandmother – in addition to other reasons that will be clarified throughout the film -: a Holocaust survivor to whom Benji was especially close and whose shared memory, on the other hand, On the other hand, it is not so important in the dramatic scaffolding of A Real Pain like the differences in character between cousins.
While David rationalizes his pain and constantly wonders about its relevance—whether it is appropriate to suffer it, or whether he is suffering it correctly—Benji lives so immersed in that pain that he pays no attention to anything else. His pain is raw. It is, so to speak, a spectacle—the discomfort it arouses in the rest of the pilgrims determines that A Real Painalthough it has not been said until now, is above all a very effective comedy -, and exposes the film to some very stimulating questions. Benji is a distorted reflection of what David thinks he should be. really feelto the point of questioning the tour guide’s insensitivity—too much “data,” he reproaches him several times—and making his companions rethink their relationship with pain.
Although it doesn’t, and this is the greatness of A Real Painas an example to follow. Benji is just a character, with his particularities and weaknesses, who has woven an image that guarantees conflict in David and the others. That’s all. Eisenberg does not believe he has found an answer to his doubts in this person who feels everything on the surface and is defined exclusively by his searing pain: Benji is, above all, an interlocutor. Through his relationship with David, a care in writing that exalts Eisenberg – also as an actor, since he withstands Culkin’s attacks wonderfully -, A Real Pain remains anchored in individual meditation with a placid and frictionless humanism, guarantor of awards and etiquette feel good that we usually use for this type of movies.
This humanism prevents us from proposing that Benji’s fixation on pain could lead to violent and vengeful outbursts—it prevents, well, from talking about Israel—but at least, from its discreet links, it provides a beautiful and exciting story. Eisenberg may still not be able to look around, but at least now he looks at himself as honestly as possible.
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