Diksha Sundriyal
Directed by Jesse Eisenberg, ‘A Real Pain’ is a comedy-drama film that follows the story of two cousins, David and Benji, who take a trip to Poland to honor their grandmother. They become part of a group led on a heritage tour around several cities, including Warsaw and Lublin, to understand the experience of their ancestors, particularly during the Second World War. As the days unfold, the estranged relationship of the cousins unravels as each tries to make sense of the tragedies of the past in context to their present pains. The film delves deep into the psyche of the characters, and what makes it better is that it originates from a very personal place for Eisenberg.
A Travel Ad Influenced the Polish Setting of A Real Pain
‘A Real Pain’ is an original story penned by Jesse Eisenberg, but what the writer began with was a lot different from how the movie turned out. In 2017, he wrote a short story called ‘Mongolia,’ which follows the story of two college friends, a lot like David and Benji, who take a trip to East Asia, which leads them on a profound and unforgettable journey. He wanted to adapt the story for the screen, particularly because he liked the “odd couple” dynamic of the protagonists. However, try as he might, he couldn’t find the thing that gives soul to a script. He found himself stuck in a rut, trying to dig out some meaning to the character’s journey, and eventually decided not to work on it anymore.
Just when Eisenberg was about to give up on the script, he saw an ad on his computer. It said, “Auschwitz tours, with lunch.” The four words struck a chord with Eisenberg, who was amused by the pairing of the words, which gave a clear message. “In four words, it sums up everything I think about being a third-generation survivor, which is: There’s no good way to experience this. There’s no perfect way to honor and revere the history because anything you do would be in the context of modern privilege,” he said. This gave him the idea of shifting the story from Central Asia to Poland and turning the college friends into mismatched cousins whose current struggles are put up against the travesties of the Holocaust and all the suffering their ancestors had to live through.
Jesse Eisenberg Drew From His Own Family History to Write A Real Pain
Once the context of the Holocaust and Poland had come into the picture, things became much clearer for Jesse Eisenberg. His own family comes from Poland. They lived in a city called Krasnystaw, which they left during the war. Hearing the stories of his family members since his childhood, the writer-director struggled with reconciling his “modern daily challenges with [his] ancestors’ historical trauma,” which became the primary theme of the film. He went back to the stories he had heard all these years and put them in the film from the perspective of different characters. He revealed that a lot of stories told by the characters, be it David and Jessie or someone else in the tour group, are his family’s stories.
He even drew from his own family members, sometimes creating a composite of them to sketch the characters that eventually come to life on the screen. Even the character of Eloge (Kurt Egyiawan) is based on one of Eisenberg’s friends, who even lets him use his real name in the film. Because Poland is so essential to the story, there was no doubt about the fact that the film should be shot there. Eisenberg led the production to all the places that he had a connection to, be it Lublin, Warsaw, or Krasnystaw. The scene where David and Benji visit their grandmother’s house in the end was filmed at the house that Eisenberg’s family used to live in before they left the country in the late 1930s. All of this allowed Eisenberg to keep things personal while making the entire story unfold from a fictional lens.
Jesse Eisenberg’s First Trip to Poland Factored Into His Writing Process
To better know his Polish roots, Jesse Eisenberg took a trip to Poland with his wife in 2008. Unlike the characters in the movie, the couple was not part of a heritage tour but traveled the country and various cities on their own. The trip gave him a better understanding of Poland and his family’s connection to it. Years later, when he started writing the story of two cousins journeying through Poland, he went back to that trip with his wife in his mind. He referred to the pictures they had taken there, especially with the monuments, as it helped him see the roadmap of the story while also coming up with scenes. In one picture taken by his wife, he was standing in front of a monument, and from here, he came up with the idea of the scene where Benji spontaneously asks everyone to pose with the Warsaw uprising memorial.
Because he wrote the script during the COVID-19 pandemic, he couldn’t visit the locations in person again. So, he used Google Maps street view to get a sense of the surroundings as well as what the actual tour would look like in real life. He also downloaded itineraries to get a general idea of the route that is taken by the tours. Out of all the memories of his 2008 trip, the thing that stood out to Eisenberg the most was how he felt standing outside his family house in Krasnystaw. He had expected to have a strong reaction to it, even something profound, but he didn’t feel anything of that sort. He was “mystified” by his lack of connection to the place that was once home to his family.
This feeling made its way into the film where we see a similar reaction from David and Benji when they finally stand outside Grandma Dory’s house. While writing ‘A Real Pain,’ Eisenberg wanted to, in a way, “close the loop” of these feelings, or lack thereof, that had stuck with him all those years ago. While the film has strong personal connotations for Eisenberg and comes a lot from his family and culture, he hopes that a wider audience can connect with it on a deeper level. At the end of the day, the story has a common theme at its core: “Our own place in the world compared to those that came before us and paved our way.” It is this universality of the story and the characters that make this fictional film so deeply real.
Read More: Where Was A Real Pain Filmed?
