Film review: A Real Pain

ARP is a drama¹ of, as wiki puts it, two mismatched cousins who reunite for a Jewish heritage tour through Poland in honor of their late grandmother. One is neurotic and the other is charming and manipulative; the neurotic one is initially annoying but the C+M one rapidly takes over that role. They join a small tour in Poland; they see stuff like an old cemetery, they visit the Majdanek concentration camp, then the two cousins go see their Grandmother's old house, which predictably enough turns out to be uninteresting². The cinematography isn't interesting either; Poland comes out mostly flat fields; I think they deliberately avoid sun or charming vistas to get the we're-serious-about-this-Holocaust-stuff feel. But actually there's little discussion of that (what, after all, could they possibly say?); there is a bizarre segment where the C+M cousin finds it incongruous to be on a first class train in Poland, which makes no sense at all (perhaps they really were struggling to say something, but failed).

How do we interpret the "real pain" of the title? I offered the C+M cousin, who would indeed be a right pain to be anywhere around. This, I see belatedly, might be supported by the poster for the film. M countered with the pain, passed down the generations, from their Grandmother. My suspicion is that is the film's intent, but I dislike that. (I need to interject some film-back-story: it turns out that the C+M cousin is empty; he lives in his mother's basement and plays video games all day, won't bother go and visit his neurotic cousin, and has attempted to kill himself). I'm not interested in the "pain" of pampered USAnians whose only problem is they don't have anything to do to fill their empty lives. There are far too many people in the world - for example, Gazans oppressed by Hamxs, or if you want something less controversial, Iranians oppressed by the Mad Mullahs - who actually deserve sympathy.

Notes

1. The film, and wiki, claim it as a comedy-drama but really it isn't.

2. The trip hazard bit is so importing US mores into other cultures and just isn't plausible. Was it an attempt at humour?