“A Real Pain” - a film (written, starred in and directed by Jesse Eisenberg), released in UK January 2025 - seen through the lens of Family Constellations
“A Real Pain” is a truly good film. It’s funny, clever, brilliantly acted and emotionally true. It’s got Chopin playing throughout. It’s also quite short and it’s a bit like watching some aspects of a Family Constellations workshop – which is why I’m writing about it.
It's the story of two mismatched Jewish first cousins David (Jesse Eisenberg) and Benji (Kieran Culkin), who go on a sort of road trip – or rather – join an organised tour with some off tour bits – to Poland to visit the land of their ancestors. Their shared paternal grandmother came from a small town in rural Poland, and they make a pilgrimage to not only her home, but to some of the tourist sites in the area, including Majdanek a concentration camp, which shockingly lies just on the edge of the city of Lublin. It's a film that tells the story of their trip interwoven with bits of their own weighty family history and tensions (old and current). It's also a film about love despite quite a lot of difficulties.
The tour is led by a somewhat geeky British non Jewish leader, and includes a small band of other explorers, including others who can trace their roots to Poland, who are just interested in shaking up their lives, and a Rwandan man who converted to Judaism after he survived the Rwandan genocide and learnt about the Holocaust of the 2nd World War.
There are issues depicted between multiple generations within one family, and a great description of what is experienced by first, second and third generation survivors of trauma. It is also a fascinating illustration of how two members of the same generation of the same family with apparently the same emotional inheritance, hold and manifest two very different emotional states. It’s also about two young men who grew up together, and shared piano lessons.
I’d love to invite the real-life cousins to participate in a Family Constellations workshop.