Dir. Jesse Eisenberg
Sometime in the first act of the film, the film tells you exactly what it is. Benji (Kieran Culkin) jumps up amongst a monument in Warsaw during the first stop on the Holocaust tour he is on with his much more stable, yet neurotic cousin David (Jesse Eisenberg). He stands right next to the 20 foot statues, pretending to be a solider himself. He begs David to join, but he won’t. Instead everyone else from the tour group does. One by one, the members of the group hand David their cameras, and they pose for a single picture amongst the statues. Even the tour guide. And David is left alone to snap the pictures.
A Real Pain is a mosaic, told from the point of view of somebody looking on from the outside. Throughout the film, David buries his own pain while Benji wears his on his sleeve.
My pain is unexceptional so don’t feel the need to burden everyone else with it
But he wants to let it out. He wants to live with his pain. But the weight of generations won’t let him. And as a Jew with grandparents who survived the Holocaust as well, it’s a familiar feeling.