Benji (Kieran Culkin) and David Kaplan (Jesse Eisenberg) are seen at far right in a scene from “A Real Pain,” directed and written by Eisenberg. (Courtesy Searchlight Pictures)<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
In Benji and David Kaplan, viewers are introduced to two very different expressions of trauma: Benji feels everything and has no filter and an ability to get people to open up, while David is overly cautious, analytical and takes medication for obsessive-compulsive disorder.<\/p>\n
They set out for Poland while reeling from the death of their grandmother, a Holocaust survivor, joining a tour group of adults much older than they are. The group is led by facts-obsessed guide James (Will Sharpe), and includes Marcia (Jennifer Grey), whose marriage recently fell apart, as well as a survivor of the Rwandan genocide, Eloge (Kurt Egyiawan).<\/p>\n
Egyiawan\u2019s character is based on a real person, Eloge Butera, who converted to Judaism because, Eisenberg said, \u201cthe only people he felt connected to were older Jewish people who could relate to the experience.\u201d Eisenberg and Butera have stayed in touch since meeting at a wedding years ago, and Eisenberg said he had always thought Butera\u2019s story made him an interesting model for a trip participant.<\/p>\n
\u201cAs I was writing, of course, it occurred to me that it does this other thing, which is allow the audience to broaden out their perspective,\u201d Eisenberg said from Indiana, wearing the same red Indiana University baseball cap his character wears throughout the film. (Eisenberg dropped out of Hebrew school in his native New York City but has recently begun attending a synagogue in Bloomington, Indiana, where he lives with his family.)<\/p>\n
He added, \u201cIt allows me to bring in other stories of trauma in a way that\u2019s not kind of academic, but actually in the physical presence of this man who is a survivor.\u201d<\/p>\n
As the movie\u2019s characters reckon with their personal and collective trauma, the main characters\u2019 differences come into stark relief. Benji wisecracks his way across the brittle terrain, while David deals with a sense of guilt for ever having felt like his own problems were legitimate.<\/p>\n
On a walk with the group, the cousins briefly imagine what their life would be like if the Holocaust didn\u2019t happen. They would probably be religious Jews, Benji thinks, and have beards, and not touch women, according to traditional interpretations of Jewish law. Bottom line: They would likely still live in Poland.<\/p>\n
That\u2019s a scenario with some appeal for Eisenberg, who developed such an affection for the country while filming there that he decided to seek citizenship, an option often available to descendants of Polish Holocaust survivors. He will become a citizen this month and formally mark the occasion at the Polish embassy in Washington, D.C., which will also screen the film.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think of myself as a New Yorker through and through, because I go to Broadway shows and I was born here, but the reality of my lineage is that we were Polish for a lot longer,\u201d Eisenberg said. \u201cThere\u2019s something so kind of sad about the way things can end so abruptly and be forgotten so abruptly, because to remember was so painful, because of the war and because so many people were killed. And so the way I think about it is I\u2019m trying to reconnect.\u201d<\/p>\n
Filming in Poland, Eisenberg said, allowed him to experience the generosity of the people living there who worked to tell his family\u2019s story and preserve the memory of the Holocaust, defying his expectations of contemporary Polish cultural attitudes toward the Holocaust.<\/p>\n
In 2018, the Polish government, led by the right-wing nationalist Law and Justice Party, passed a law criminalizing speech blaming Poland for crimes committed by the Nazis, part of a broad effort to demand pride in Polish history. (The party was ousted from power last year.) The law created a chilling effect for some stewards of Holocaust history, curbing a public reckoning about the degree to which Poles collaborated with the Nazis.<\/p>\n
The crackdown on \u201cunpatriotic\u201d accounts of Polish history also caused a shakeup at the Polin Museum, Poland\u2019s national Jewish museum, where \u201cA Real Pain\u201d had its international premiere in May. A museum leader was pushed out when he sought to stage an exhibit about a wave of antisemitic persecution in 1968. When the museum recently marked its first decade, Eisenberg spoke virtually at the gala.<\/p>\n
Eisenberg said the political tensions over Holocaust memory did not encroach on him as he filmed on location, including at the interior of the Majdanek concentration camp, which remains remarkably preserved.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m aware of it in a kind of intellectual way, but my experience there was just the exact opposite,\u201d he said. \u201cI was working with a crew of 150 people who were all eager and working their asses off to try to make my personal family story come to life.\u201d<\/p>\n
In gaining permission to film at Majdanek, Eisenberg said he benefited from telling a story that is rooted firmly in the present, even though the camp uniquely lends itself to filmmaking set in the past because it remains in roughly the same condition as it was in when the Nazis operated it.<\/p>\n
\u201cA few things were in our favor: Most movies want to shoot in Majdanek, and they want to turn it into 1942 Auschwitz, and they want to have 100 extras in Nazi uniforms running around with guns. We were trying to do the opposite,\u201d Eisenberg said. \u201cWhat we were trying to do was depict Majdanek as it is now as a tourist site, in an attempt to do the exact thing Majdanek is trying to do itself, which is to try to bring awareness to this, to the horrors that occurred on these grounds.\u201d<\/p>\n
He said he had ended up becoming close with a number of young scholars on the staff at the camp memorial. \u201cOur relationship started off with suspicion,\u201d Eisenberg recalled, \u201cand wound up as a beautiful meeting of the minds.\u201d<\/p>\n
Eisenberg said he believed that collaborating with others around his age \u2014 removed by generations from direct connection with the Holocaust \u2014 enabled \u201cA Real Pain\u201d to channel a fresh approach to grappling with the past.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m in a younger generation,\u201d he said. \u201cI have enough distance to go to Poland \u2026 and not feel the kind of visceral memories of pain, but going there with an open heart and mind and meeting people who I love and who are contemporaries and friends and who are working to make the world a better place.\u201d<\/p>\n
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