Review
Culture
Film & TV
Mental Health
Trauma
5 min read

The battle between seen and unseen pain

Jesse Eisenberg explores how the generations cope with pain.

Krish is a social entrepreneur partnering across civil society, faith communities, government and philanthropy. He founded The Sanctuary Foundation.

Two male cousins converse across the aisle of a train.
Kieran Culkin and Jesse Eisenberg.

In today’s ultra-developed world, where technological and medical advances have reached unprecedented heights, suffering remains an unsolved problem. While the World Health Organization claims the successful prevention, elimination, or treatment of more diseases than ever before, it also highlights significant increases in anxiety, depression, and stress-related disorders worldwide. This paradox raises questions not only about the root causes of mental health suffering but also about the way we understand its current prevalence and impact. Are today’s struggles any different to those others have experienced before us? Is the pain equally real? As we approach the eightieth anniversary of Holocaust Memorial Day, can we truly equate the silent struggles of contemporary emotional health challenges with the unimaginably harrowing experiences of those who endured the worst horrors of war, violence, and genocide?  

Jesse Eisenberg dares to tackle these complex questions with his directorial debut, A Real Pain, a masterful exploration of trauma, resilience, and the search for meaning. Co-starring Kieran Culkin in a career-defining performance, the film takes viewers on a journey that is part road trip, part comedy-drama, part historical reflection, and wholly compelling. I believe it offers a timely and deeply thought-provoking challenge to consider how we recognise and process pain across generations as well as understand the way pain shapes – and reshapes – our lives.  

In the film, Eisenberg and Culkin portray two estranged Jewish-American cousins, David and Benji, who embark on a shared mission to retrace the steps of their grandmother, a Holocaust survivor. What begins as a simple road trip to Poland quickly transforms into something much more as the brutal reality of intergenerational trauma and mental health struggles rise to the surface.  The film’s themes can be explored through three key lenses: the passing on of pain, the proximity of pain, and the problem of pain. 

The passing on of pain 

At its heart, A Real Pain is a story about legacy—the burdens and blessings passed down through generations. Though their shared grandmother is no longer alive, her story of survival, resilience, and eventual flourishing has left a profound impact on her descendants. Her story draws the cousins in, but it also draws them together and apart in different ways over the course of the trip. There is tragedy and comedy, and poignant moments of connection as well as frustration as Eisenberg explores how trauma echoes through generations, affecting different people in different ways, weighing heavily on those who did not live through the original events. This theme is handled with nuance showing both the strength and fragility that come from confronting a painful past. Ultimately it brings us to a new question – how do we honour the suffering of those who came before us while also finding our own path, or paths, to healing? 

The proximity of pain 

As the cousins delve deeper into their family’s history, the film juxtaposes the grandmother’s resilience in the face of antisemitism, war, and Holocaust with Benji’s struggles. Despite severe loss, grief and trauma, the grandmother went on to live a meaningful life. Benji on the other hand struggles to keep on top of his daily responsibilities, hold down a job, and maintain relationships. He struggles to find any meaning in his life and reveals he has attempted suicide. How, he wonders, did his grandmother find the strength to fight for her life against the backdrop of the Holocaust when he can’t even navigate the relative peace of middle-class America? This question seems to add to his despair. He seems thoroughly beaten.  

Eisenberg does not provide easy answers but instead invites viewers to wrestle with these complexities of life and death, resilience, and vulnerability. He forces us to confront our assumptions about suffering and strength. By making us reflect on which pain is more real, he seems to have found a way to challenge us both to honour the reality of past trauma and recognise the reality of the struggles faced by those around us.  He has certainly found a way to help us empathise both with the millions of people who are currently displaced and traumatised by violence, conflict, and displacement, and, equally, with the millions whose mental health is in tatters.   

The problem of pain 

At its core, A Real Pain tackles the universal question: what do we do with suffering? Do we bury it in the past? Do we pretend it does not exist? Do we insulate ourselves from the pain of others? Do we respond with frustration and anger or with patience and empathy? Do we accept pain as a tragic by-product of existence? Do we struggle under the burden of it? Do we let it defeat us? Do we find ways to learn from it? Can pain make us stronger? Can it make us better people? Does it point to something deeper within us or, indeed, something beyond us? 

Right in the middle of the film, David and Benji meet a survivor of the Rwandan genocide. who provides a stark reminder that the horrors of the Holocaust are not just consigned to history, that even today there are places where entire people groups are being targeted, destroyed, and displaced. This character has clearly found solace and meaning through his faith, in contrast to the cousins’ secular Jewish identities. The tension between belief and unbelief runs through the film and reflects the wider experience of many for whom pain has been a critical factor in their journey either to faith or away from it.  

For C.S. Lewis, the author of the Narnia chronicles who offered spiritual solace to the nation during the Second World War and who was personally familiar with suffering writes: “God whispers to us in our pleasures, speaks in our conscience, but shouts in our pains: it is His megaphone to rouse a deaf world.” Pain, for many Christians like Lewis is supposed to draw us towards faith – it is an urgent invitation to seek meaning and connection in a fractured world. Pain reminds us of our mortality and vulnerability, and our dependence not just on others, but perhaps too on an Almighty being who offers hope, healing and the promise of a life beyond this in a world where there is no more death, no more tears, no more pain.  

With A Real Pain, Jesse Eisenberg has crafted a film that will make you laugh and cry and think and discuss and reach out to others, or even to God.  This film invites you to reflect on the past, present and future, to wrestle with the pain we carry and to seek meaning beyond it. It’s a must-watch for anyone who dares to reflect on life’s most profound questions.  

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Article
Culture
Easter
Sport
4 min read

Rory McIlroy’s pilgrim’s progress

The golfer’s relief at finally laying his burden down.

Graham is the Director of the Centre for Cultural Witness and a former Bishop of Kensington.

A golf clutches his face after winning a competition
McIlroy's moment at the Masters.
Simon Bruty/Augusta National.

It's Sunday evening. Along with most golf fans, I'm still up around 1 am, gripped by the drama unfolding on the famous course at Augusta, Georgia. Despite being one of the world’s best golfers, for the past eleven years, Rory McIlroy has been carrying around three big burdens. One, he has never won the Masters, one of golf’s iconic competitions. Two, he last won a ‘major’ eleven years ago and inexplicably has kept missing out on winning golf’s biggest tournaments. Three, there is the ‘career grand slam’ – winning all four ‘majors’ (of which the Masters is one) – something only five golfers in the history of the game have done before, none of them European. Rory has won three of them, but this one – The Masters - has always eluded him. 

After four agonising days, with his fortunes switching this way and that like a drunk driver careering down a road, Rory stands over a four-foot putt on the final play-off hole, one that even average amateur golfers like me would expect to make. Heart pounding, he nudges the ball forward. As it rolls into the white-ringed hole, his knees crumple, shoulders shake, as tears of relief and joy pour down his face. You can almost see all three burdens roll away in that moment. As he put in in a post-round interview: “This is a massive weight that's been lifted off my back.” 

As a self-confessed fan of Rory, who seems genuinely humble and likeable, with a golf swing as smooth as butter, I punch the air, probably like most golf fans around the world. Watching the post-round interviews, you can sense his elation and liberation. As Scottie Scheffler, last year’s winner, clothes him in the coveted green jacket, awarded to all winners of the tournament, Rory cannot stop grinning, wandering around the Champions’ Locker Room, which he has had no right to enter until this point, like a kid in a sweet shop.  

Now I’m sure the golf committee at Augusta National never thought for a moment they were drawing on rich religious imagery for their award ceremony and the emotions generated in winning their tournament, but Rory’s relief made me look up a moment in John Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress. The parallels in this old tale of Puritan faith were even more striking than I expected.  

In Bunyan’s dream-story, the main character, Christian, having been through years of tests, trials, ups and downs, reaches the climax of the tale as he reaches Calvary, the place where the cross of Jesus Christ stood: 

Just as Christian came up to the cross, his burden loosed from off his shoulders, and fell from off his back, and began to tumble; and so continued to do till it came to the mouth of the sepulchre, where it fell in, and I saw it no more. 

Then there was the tearful joy and relief:  

Then was Christian glad and lightsome. He looked therefore, and looked again, even till the springs that were in his head sent the waters down his cheeks. 

There was even the celestial equivalent of the green jacket. Three angels appear, and one of them: 

…stripped him of his rags, and clothed him with a change of raiment. And unto him he said, Behold, I have caused thine iniquity to pass from thee, and I will clothe thee with change of raiment.  

Burdens rolled away, tears of joy, dressed in new clothing. It’s all there.  

Yet this comparison tells of a difference. 

Bunyan’s relief was about forgiveness. Rory McIlroy’s came from winning a game of golf. His Twitter / X self-designation delightfully used to read: “I hit a little white ball around a field sometimes.” (It now reads ‘Grand Slam Winner’ - not so good in my humble opinion). 

The lessons drawn were all about persevering, persistence, getting there in the end. Looking across at his young daughter Poppy, Rory said:  

‘Never, ever give up on your dreams. Keep coming back, keep working hard, and if you put your mind to it, you can do anything.’ 

Yet of course there was nothing inevitable about his victory. It could so easily have gone the other way. His putt might have slid past the hole, Justin Rose, his play-off opponent might have sunk his, and Rory might never have won the Masters, never won the Grand Slam. That is the nature of sport. However strong your dreams, however good your skills, winning is never guaranteed. Not everyone’s dreams come true. It's simply not true that “if you put your mind to it, you can do anything.”  Ask Justin Rose.

Bunyan’s relief is something completely different. It's not the relief of having achieved something. It's the relief of receiving something - a totally undeserved gift - more like a prisoner receiving news of an unexpected release, or someone owing huge debts receiving a windfall which enables her not only to pay off the debts but to live comfortably in the future. 

The relief of the winner who finally achieves their dream is wonderful to watch. But for those whose dreams don't get fulfilled, for the likes of Justin Rose, who at age 44 seems destined never to win it, that kind of joy remains tantalisingly out of reach. 

Christian’s tears of happiness are not the tears of the winner but of the loser. They are for those whose dreams never come true as well as those whose do. They are for those who fall short yet are given the gift of forgiveness, peace and hope. They are - potentially at least - for all of us, winners or losers.  

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