The word “travel” comes from the French word “travail,” which means “suffering” or “effort” mired in discomfort, or put simply, “pain.” In the movie A Real Pain (Jesse Eisenberg, 2024), this pain stems from a rooted sense of identity and the dangers of being cast adrift.
The film is about two cousins portrayed by Jesse Eisenberg (nominated for an Oscar for Best Original Screenplay for this) and Kieran Culkin (who earned a Best Supporting Actor nomination for his role) traveling to Poland for a Holocaust memorial tour to honor their late grandmother, who survived the camps. Ultimately, the real pain must be cast aside, forgotten, or ignored. The two cousins, close as brothers, eventually drift apart with stark consequences for both.
Initially, the movie veers dangerously close to the usual trope of an odd couple on a road trip. Eisenberg, the anal, anxious, and apologetic one, must deal with Culkin’s equally nervous energy, which has no trigger warnings and comes off as unhinged.
We have seen these two actors play such roles before. Eisenberg has often portrayed awkward, bumbling characters (e.g., The Social Network, Zombieland), while Culkin has made a name for himself portraying brats (Igby Goes Down, Scott Pilgrim, Succession) who are infuriating and irascible. Yet, the movie follows this path of expectations until the third act, which destabilizes these tropes.
Eisenberg’s anal personality and Culkin’s skittishness mask the pain they both carry. We do not immediately know what this pain is, but there are breadcrumbs along the way. The revelation scene is one of the most poignant moments of the film. It is expertly shot by Eisenberg, focusing on a dinner table and a lonely piano in the corner.
The thing with road trip movies is that (1) there is a revelation eventually, and (2) the landscape plays a crucial role. These two wired-up anxious Americans are nervous energies amidst the beautiful and bucolic Polish urban and rural landscapes.
The landscape is crucial because, despite the immense beauty of the place, it hides the untold horrors of eradication. That is the core of this movie: rememberance and monumentality.
In the Jewish tradition, those living leave stones atop graves to signify that the dearly departed will not be forgotten. Stones and iterations of concrete material abound in this movie. Eisenberg is an adept director who shoots monuments with loving and somber detail, mixed with bouts of irreverence.
One scene foregrounds the stark difference between the two cousins. Culkin’s character wants to pose wackily at a memorial for Polish soldiers, while Eisenberg’s character prefers to be more reverential but ends up as a not-so-willing accomplice to such a moment of hilarity. This scene might resemble a tourism reel for Poland, but Eisenberg folds in the narratives of the Holocaust and the memories that linger. It is one of the most beautifully shot locations of utmost horror. The blue tint of the Zyklon B gas on the walls looks like menacing witnesses, marked on the walls.
What is tragic while watching this film is realizing how Manila (the second most devastated city in World War II after Poland’s Warsaw) has no formidable monuments for our horrors. Memory is perfectly embedded in the Polish capital and the Polish countryside. Monuments are about bigger commemorations of a sanctioned memory, whereas the rocks on the grave are a slight, personal touch of remembrance. Both are materials declaring that we must not forget. After all, the real ignominy is having no sense of history and a short memory.
A Real Pain is showing at Ayala Cinemas.
You may reach Chong Ardivilla at kartunistatonto@gmail.com or chonggo.bsky.social.