Jesse Eisenberg Opens Up About ‘A Real Pain’

deadline.com:

SPOILER ALERT:This interview contains plot details for the film A Real Pain If you can believe it, writer-director and star Jesse Eisenberg never meant to hurt you with his latest dark comedy, A Real Pain.

Centered around two cousins, David (Eisenberg), a buttoned-up online ads salesman, and Benji (Kieran Culkin), a drifter who suffers from great passion and listlessness, as they travel to Poland to join a Holocaust tour after the death of their beloved grandmother, with her childhood home as their final stop. “It’s funny because people tell me they cry during the movie, and my question always to them is when?

Because I didn’t direct any of the scenes to be crying scenes. I get different answers…[but] I’m always surprised by that,” Eisenberg said.

While there is a lot of levity spliced between the movie’s more reflective moments, the film has a lot to say about dealing with repressed grief and unresolved pain.