Jesse Eisenberg made A Real Pain to explore how the Holocaust’s history can shape descendants who did not experience it themselves. The film grew out of a failed attempt to adapt one of his stories, then took a new direction after an online ad for Holocaust tours suggested a Poland road trip for its two central characters.
How the story changed direction
Eisenberg has said the film began as an attempt to adapt “Mongolia,” a story he had written for Tablet. The adaptation was not working. An online advertisement for Holocaust tours gave him another way into the material: he set aside that version and returned to the same two characters, now sending them on a road trip in Poland.
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In an interview with Tablet Magazine, Eisenberg described the origin this way: “This movie started as an attempted adaptation of a story I wrote for Tablet years ago called ‘Mongolia.’” The travel premise gave the characters a reason to confront family history and the places connected to it.
Why Poland and the heritage tour matter
In the film, cousins David and Benji, played by Eisenberg and Kieran Culkin, join a Jewish heritage tour in Poland that includes Majdanek. The setting brings them into contact with Holocaust history, but the film is not a retelling of the Holocaust. Eisenberg uses the journey to examine the cousins’ relationship with one another and with pain inherited through family memory.
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- Mismatched cousins David (Jesse Eisenberg) and Benji (Kieran Culkin) reunite for a tour through Poland to honor their beloved grandmother. The adventure takes a turn when the odd couple?s old tensions resurface against the backdrop of their family history.
The third generation and inherited trauma
Eisenberg has connected the film to the experience of the third generation: descendants who did not live through the Holocaust, and whose parents did not experience it directly, but who may still feel its effects through family history. He described the tension as having “anxieties and paranoias” that cannot be tied directly to the event, only to “the ripple effects of the event.”
That distinction matters to the film’s premise. David and Benji are not presented as having personally experienced the Holocaust; their journey is about how they respond to its history and to what has been passed down in their family.
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The family history behind Grandma Dory
The story also draws on Eisenberg’s own family background. The character Grandma Dory is based on his great-aunt Doris, who emigrated from Poland to the United States. Dory is a fictional character inspired by a real relative; the connection helps explain why the film’s questions about ancestry and memory are personal for Eisenberg.
Independent reader supportYour contribution helps us test, update, and keep practical guides available for everyone.Reverence alongside irreverence
Eisenberg said he wanted the film to hold two tones together: respect for Holocaust history and an irreverent, sometimes transgressive approach to the characters’ present-day experience. He described this as his own honest way of experiencing history, not as a rule for how others should approach the subject.
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