"A Real Pain" by Jesse Eisenberg, contributed by Willie Hu (2025)
A Real Pain (2024) is a film about understanding a deeply personal loss in the larger historical framework of the Holocaust, which led to the loss of home, exile, and loved ones for millions of Jews. The story follows two cousins, who are reunited by the passing of their grandmother and the Jewish heritage tour in Poland that they planned per her wishes. A Real Pain neither pities nor congratulate itself for its subject matter—it simply offers a case study of the various losses that structure our lives and a kaleidoscopic view of the human idiosyncracies of grappling with loss. In my opinion, it makes a blunt statement about our collective (in)ability to fully empathize with the different shapes of vulnerability that we have to confront in our shared grief. While simple and subtle in itself, A Real Pain considerably complicates the social and cultural narrative around loss.
