2024 marked the release of A Real Pain, a contemplative film about two Polish-Jewish-American cousins on a holocaust tour of Poland after the death of their grandmother, herself a holocaust survivor. We quickly learn that these cousins, David (Jesse Eisenberg) and Benji (Kieran Culkin) have seemingly opposite personalities and have responded to the loss of their grandmother in equally distinct ways. Each of us probably relates to one cousin or the other; David takes a reserved approach, only showing his sadness at a few key moments, whereas Benji acts out his grief in much more visible ways throughout the ninety-minute runtime. Furthermore, their tour group is made up of people with their own experiences with suffering, ranging from their non-Jewish tour guide who has made a living studying the holocaust to Eloge, a Rwandan convert to Judaism who survived a genocide. Through each of these characters, writer and director Jesse Eisenberg highlights several ways humans can make sense of suffering, but this article focuses on Benji and David only, who give us an intimate view of living with pain. I highly recommend you watch this movie to go even further with its explorations of injustice, evil, and Jewish history and culture. Plus, I will spoil parts of the story here, so you may want to see it for yourself before reading further.

David and Benji

Eisenberg shows much of the film from David’s perspective, and it’s likely that many of us understand more of where David’s coming from. David has obsessive-compulsive disorder and is generally a highly controlled person. He makes good money at a conventional job, lives with his wife and kid, and initially seems less bothered by his grandmother’s death. He’s thoughtful and does his best not to rock the boat, but we catch occasional glimpses of a rebellious streak when he and Benji sneak onto the roof of their hotel to smoke a joint or catch a train ride they don’t have tickets for. Eventually, we see his grief on full display when he breaks down crying in front of the tour group over Benji’s attempted suicide. While he wasn’t as close with his grandmother, he clearly feels some sentimentality when he describes her and when he and Benji visit her old apartment in Poland. David is the classic internalizing mourner, reluctant to burden others with his feelings or even validate his own grief for fear that it might stop him from meeting his own expectations.

Benji, on the other hand, externalizes his grief all the time. He cries, yells, drinks, and seems incapable of keeping his thoughts to himself. At times he seems unaware of the negative effects of his actions; he’s chronically late, he blows up at his tour group for choosing to ride first class on their train, and he disappears for a whole night without letting David know where he’s going. Yet, he has surprising emotional intelligence, pointing out to David when other members of the tour group are feeling down and going out of his way to cheer people up and invite them to connect and practice vulnerability. By the end of the film, we see that Benji has left a significant positive impact on everyone in the group, whereas by playing it safe David remains somewhat forgotten. Those of us who relate to Benji are likely honest to a fault, able to truly encounter our own and others’ emotions but sometimes struggling to regulate our response to those feelings.

Neither character seems to handle things “better” than the other. In fact, we see both David and Benji envying aspects of each other’s lives, with David wishing he had Benji’s easy charm and influence over others and Benji longing for the security and intimacy David finds in his work and family. They both resent each other too; Benji wants David to come out of his shell and connect more while David needs Benji to keep himself in check and not cause problems for everyone around them. Ultimately, both feel lonely, and they end the film still in pain, but a little closer to each other.

How We Relate

By looking at David and Benji, we can learn something about our own approach to suffering and grief. Some of us take after David and keep our pain to ourselves. We have trouble allowing ourselves space to visibly grieve for fear of dragging others down or losing our ability to function. Maybe we bury our pain under layers of shame, discrediting our feelings by comparing ourselves to others and minimizing what we’ve gone through. I’ve heard people like David say, “Other people have had it worse than me,” or “What I went through was normal.” For the Davids out there, we need to take our pain seriously and give ourselves the chance to receive care. When we hide our grief, we rob ourselves of the chance to connect authentically with our loved ones or process what we’ve gone through, and it can leave us powerless over our emotions when they break through our defenses. However, we can also celebrate our own strengths as relatively high-functioning and considerate people. In contrast, Benji’s of the world have little trouble sharing our grief with those around us. What Benji’s need is to learn coping skills that keep us from blowing up and hurting others. We need to develop social awareness so we can pick the appropriate times to express our grief without making others excessively cater to our moods. That said, we often have a talent for inviting people to genuinely connect, and at our best we can create a sense of safety and acceptance for ourselves and others.

Very few of us will fit entirely with either extreme of internalizing or externalizing. Rather, we all can look to the examples we see in A Real Pain and identify when we need to learn from David and when we need to follow Benji’s example. And, most importantly, David and Benji both teach us that we ought to connect with each other when we’re hurting, whether it’s a pain we share loudly or quietly.

If you need someone to connect with you in your suffering, please don’t hesitate to reach out and schedule an initial session with one of our therapists here at Optimum Joy. No matter what, you don’t have to hurt alone.