Past and present pain is tragicomically revisited in Jesse Eisenberg’s elliptical excursion, screened in the “Best of Festivals” section at Tallinn’ Black Nights Film Festival
Underneath the lighthearted surface, the titular theme of Jesse Eisenberg‘s second cinematic work as director weighs so heavy it almost crushes the fragile framework of a story struggling dramaturgically to reconcile the adverse approaches to cognitive connection represented by its two contrasting characters. The one slightly more in the narrative focus – as opposed to his reserved position in the tour group both spend most of the film with – and discreetly defined as “normal”, at least in the sense of “how most people are”, is David (Eisenberg). Overadjusted, overbearing and overanxious, the family father is the diametrical opposite of his impulsive, unstable cousin Benji (Kieran Culkin).
His casual attitude, intuitively integrating in social spheres and situations, hides a deeply troubled persona. The same could be said for his cousin who has just another way of cloaking harrowing feelings such as fear, grief and hopelessness. Not coincidental it is these kinds of emotions aroused during their joint trip to Poland where they hope to reconnect with their Jewish ancestry by visiting their recently deceased grandmother’s hometown. The farther the journey with their motley tour group lead by well-intended James (Will Sharpe) progresses, the more apparent becomes Benji’s inner turmoil which other than David he won’t suppress with psychotropics.
While the analogy between historical and personal trauma as well reconnection is somewhat stilted, the plot itself is an entertaining exception to the medical mantra that any kind of emotional or mental difference from a deeply discriminatory dogma of “the norm” has to be eliminated. Unsurprisingly, the director-writer doesn’t dare to relate forceful psychosocial and psychiatric assimilation to the fascist fanaticism present in the revisited history. Still, he hints at the personal price paid for not misbehaving publicly like Benji. Within a symbolic sibling story both funny and sad, he is a rare remembrance that numbness is universal and breaking through social patterns occasionally liberating.
- OT: A Real Pain
- Director: Jesse Eisenberg
- Screenplay: Jesse Eisenberg
- Year: 2024
- Distribution | Production © Serchlight Pictures
