Category: memory

‘A Real Pain’ – Film Review and Analysis

“Traveling with a family member can be an invigorating yet challenging experience, especially when the family member in question has recently faced a potential tragedy, and you’ve become estranged from them.”

Traveling with a family member can be an invigorating yet challenging experience, especially when the family member in question has recently faced a potential tragedy, and you’ve become estranged from them. This is the dilemma faced by the co-protagonist of A Real Pain, David Kaplan (Jesse Eisenberg). On a trip to Poland, David must confront his family’s heritage while dealing with the eccentricities and hyperactive behavior of his cousin, Benji Kaplan (Kieran Culkin).

On the surface, David and Benji share a mutual love for their recently deceased grandmother and the memories they have of her, along with their childhood experiences. They are both nominally Jewish, although the film makes it clear that neither is particularly devout or observant. Benji is outspoken and upfront about his views on almost anything, while David is quiet, observant, and reserved in social settings. Benji seems to have retained the same rambunctious personality he had as a youth, whereas David now has a wife, a child, and a steady career in New York City as a digital marketer.

Following their grandmother’s death, Benji struggles to find his footing in adulthood. He works odd jobs in Binghamton, New York, and lives in his mother’s basement. Though less mature and socially aware than David, Benji is full of life and feels emotions more intensely. He has no filter, makes no apologies for it, and leaves a lasting impression on everyone he meets much to David’s frustration of not being able to do the same.

Despite not seeing each other for months after a distressing event in Benji’s life, the cousins decide to embark on a heritage trip to Poland. They join a group of American Jews to learn more about their ancestry and the circumstances surrounding their family’s departure from Nazi-occupied Poland. The group also includes other descendants of survivors with roots in Poland. The tour is efficiently led by a non-Jewish guide, who does an excellent job recounting the history of Polish Jews before World War II, the lead-up to the Holocaust, and the exodus of those who managed to survive. However, Benji finds the guide’s focus on statistics and dates robotic and disconnected from the lives of the people who were lost.

Benji’s outbursts during the tour seem socially inappropriate to David, displaying a lack of respect for the guide and the other participants. However, Benji’s emotional authenticity eventually wins over the group by the end of the tour. Unlike others on the trip, he refuses to numb himself to the pain of what they are witnessing and expresses his feelings freely without concern for others’ judgment. While his emotional instability troubles some on the tour, it also makes him memorable. Benji turns what could have been a somber and overwhelming experience into something more meaningful reminding everyone what it feels like to be truly alive.

In contrast, David hesitates to smoke a joint on the hotel roof, voice a critique during the tour, or even have a drink to relax after a long day. Meanwhile, Benji has no reservations about doing any of those things. Benji embraces life’s highs and lows, even when it leaves him emotionally unsteady, while David seeks stability and strives to remain even keeled through life’s challenges and opportunities. Despite his efforts, David feels let down by his job and struggles with doubts about how much his family truly loves him. Benji, on the other hand, is too immersed in the moment, sometimes for better, and sometimes for worse. The cousins admire yet resent each other throughout the film. Growing up in similar circumstances, they’ve ended up leading vastly different lives due to their contrasting personalities. While they can enjoy each other’s company, they also tire of one another quickly. Each character envies what the other has but is fiercely protective of their own lifestyle.

A Real Pain explores the concept of pain in a nuanced way: the pain of losing a loved one, the pain of dealing with a challenging family member, and the generational pain of having a family’s future stolen. The film captures how different people cope with these pains: David, Benji, the other tour participants, and even the tour guide, as they confront the events of the Holocaust, visit a Polish Jewish cemetery, and tour the Majdanek concentration camp. The message is clear: to cope with pain healthily, we must face it head-on in our own way. This journey of confronting pain is essential for building our resilience and strength.

Pain is what connects us to our humanity, reminding us that we are truly alive. During the trip, Benji recounts a painful memory: their grandmother once slapped him in a New York City restaurant because he arrived late for dinner. She had dressed up for the occasion, and the public slap left Benji feeling real pain. However, he acknowledges that this act of accountability, though hurtful, came from a place of love. Benji yearns for this kind of tough love from others, particularly from David. He craves someone who can hold him back from his impulsive tendencies, showing him care and affection in the process.

A poignant moment in the film occurs when David and Benji visit their late grandmother’s former house in Poland. The home is now owned by another family, and any traces of the Kaplans’ presence have long vanished. In a touching gesture, David places a stone in front of the house to honor their grandmother’s memory. However, the moment takes a humorous yet bittersweet turn when an elderly Polish man chastises them. He misunderstands their intention, believing the stone was placed maliciously to cause harm to the current elderly resident. Despite their efforts to explain the Jewish tradition of placing stones as a memorial to remember their deceased grandmother, the older man remains unconvinced despite his son’s English to Polish translation of their reasoning for having placed the stone there. Feeling awkward about the entire encounter, David and Benji decide to take the stone with them when they leave Poland.

In a beautifully symbolic gesture upon his return to New York, David later places the stone at the entrance of his Brooklyn home, where he lives with his wife and child. This act underscores the universal idea that “home is where the heart is.” While the memory of the family’s life in Poland has faded, their grandmother’s legacy endures. Her journey as an immigrant to America, striving to build a new life for her family while preserving her Jewish identity, continues to inspire her descendants, including David and Benji.

As the film concludes, the audience is left wondering about the futures of David and Benji’s relationship and their individual paths. The heritage trip and their shared memories of their grandmother seem to strengthen their bond. The film suggests that, despite their differences, family is ultimately the one thing you can rely upon in life. While Benji and David drive each other crazy, they also admire and need each other. The hope is that they will continue to support one another, bringing balance to each other’s lives with David finding more spontaneity and emotional authenticity, and Benji discovering greater stability and purpose.

The Utility of Making Lists

“A key productivity hack that really works wonders in our fast-paced, modern era, which involves both discipline and consistency is to make a list. It is also an excellent habit to build upon and one that only requires your laptop and a ‘notes’ application or just a simple pen and piece of paper.”

A key productivity hack that really works wonders in our fast-paced, modern era, which involves both discipline and consistency is to make a list. It is also an excellent habit to build upon and one that only requires your laptop and a ‘notes’ application or just a simple pen and piece of paper. Lists have a reputation of being tedious and time-consuming, but what is actually more time-consuming is spending minutes or even hours trying to remind yourself what tasks or items you actually have to do.

List making is a good habit to build upon for a number of reasons. You hold yourself accountable and there is no shirking away from what you have set for yourself. The biggest misconception when it comes to lists is that they are all the same and focused on a to-do list. You can make lists for other reasons ranging from your progress at the gym with different weights you’ve lifted and what you hope to accomplish next to your future goals in life and what you hope to do in your ‘bucket list.’ Lists not only involve things you have to do whether its grocery shopping, what bills you have to pay, or what errands you have to run but also what career / business goals you have, what your exercise regimen looks like or where you hope to travel to in terms of next destinations.

Making lists is part of exercising that daily discipline that you need to have in order to put yourself on a path to success. It’s easier to accomplish your goals or your tasks when you remember what they are. You may have an amazing memory and feel you don’t need to have any lists at all but having that reminder especially if you have a due date for a pending school assignment or a work task can really help you especially if your memory fails you, which is always possible.

The impact of technology in our lives has made our attention spans that much more limited or distracted so I believe that the utility of lists has increased in response. There are many more things on our plate that we have to pay attention to that we may not have time to remember them all. Lists can help us organize these tasks from most urgent to least urgent and give us some peace of mind since you would likely have these lists stored in a place such as in an application on a computer or in a folder if you’re more traditional with pen and paper.

Not only do lists help to organize our lives, our goals, and our tasks, but lists also hold us accountable just by the fact that they make clear what you have done or what you have not done. There is no arguing with a list because you have either done it or not done it. You can indicate in a list your progress towards the goal or the task but it’s better to simplify it to be blunt to ask of you whether the item is completed or not. If it isn’t done yet, you can go back to it to see how much you have left to do, whether it’s been started yet, or how much you have left to finish. That kind of blunt accountability, which can be lacking in our society, is going to be staring you right in the face, so there is really no hiding from a list because it does not sugarcoat anything or try to come up with an excuse.

I also would like to point out that making too many lists can hinder you from achieving all you would like to get done each day, each week, or beyond. You should be careful not to make too many lists or have too many notes where you start to forget what actually is most vital to get done. I would recommend instead to make one list only for a specific part of your life such as one for exercise, one for work, one for business, one for errands, and perhaps one for future goals. That’s five lists right there on a specific subject so not to become too cluttered or difficult to implement. Lists can help you out a lot up to a point but can become burdensome when you have a dozen lists for ten different parts of your life.

In any list you make, focus on a main goal you wish to achieve for the day and then start to branch out to include weekly tasks and then long-term goals that may take months. Organizing an individual list around immediate, medium-term, and long-term tasks is an effective way to stay on top of each part of your life that will need attention. Having five lists, for example, can be helpful too where you might start the day looking at your exercise task(s) to complete, then move on to work/school, then see about errands, and then see what future goals you are working towards that you can start on. Organizing lists is about as important as making lists to begin with and it’s very important not to make too many lists where you feel like you can’t keep track of them all or have too long of a list where it distracts from your other lists that you’re working on.

You may be thinking to yourself right now, why do you care about making lists so much and why have lists at all? Having list(s) is about building structure in one’s life. You can create good habits from following your lists and you can organize your life in a meaningful and productive way. Also, you alone can hold yourself accountable with lists as it’s only you who knows about the list and is responsible for completing the goals and the tasks that you set up for yourself. No one else is going to hold your hand so it’s up to you alone to be reliable, responsible, and solely in charge of ultimately crossing those important items off your list(s) to help make your life a better, happier, and healthier one.

What are we left with? (Our Memories)

I was asked a question recently that was very deep and thought-provoking. A friend asked me if I had to choose between an old age spent losing my physical abilities but keeping my mental faculties or an old age spent losing my mental faculties and keeping my physical abilities, which one would I choose? The question gave me pause because I normally do not focus a lot on my impending aging but it’s natural to think of what life will be like once you are an elderly person. My friend did not hesitate to say that he would choose having his physical abilities intact since he is a very active person and enjoys running, hiking, and exercising at the gym.

He thought that I would agree with him and I do like to keep active as well physically but I also thought of what would happen to my mind if I could no longer process and retain information about books I love, music I enjoy, and movies where I can recite a lot of lines of dialogue from. Perhaps most importantly, I thought of all the memories I have made up until this point of both friends and loved ones and how it would be anguishing to me if I succumb to a disease of the mind where I lose sight of who I am or who my family or friends are. I think that really is a fate worse than physical deterioration because I find that our physical abilities and our peak performance do not last and Father Time will have our way with all of us regardless of how much we exercise, take vitamins, and play sports. Eventually, your body will break down especially the older you get and there is only so much you can do to spot that.

However, I tend to believe that exercising our mind and our mental capabilities can be a lot easier and take a lot less work than it takes to maintain our physical body. We live in an age where you can learn anything you want about an unlimited number of subjects. Keeping our minds sharp by studying foreign languages, learning new subjects, reading good books, writing our thoughts down in a journal are all healthy activities to kind the mind sharp. I am not an expert in terms of how to keep our mental capacities up as we go through life but I would imagine that putting your brain to the test especially with puzzles, trivia games, and sudoku especially can help you preserve what is most important to you.

Unfortunately, I have seen firsthand how sad and tragic it is for others to slowly lose their mental capacities and that is what tipped me towards the idea of focusing as much, if not more so, on giving myself the best show to work on my concentration, my memory, and my ability to learn new things. I believe that we all have that same capacity to preserve our mental capacities although it does take consistent work that not only last years but lasts decades as well.

Part of the reason why it is good to be able to exercise your brain as much as possible is because I really believe it makes you a more well-rounded and thoughtful person. Learning new things is something you should never really give up on. Having a college degree or a law degree or a medical degree is not really an excuse to stop learning and stop exercising your mind to the most you can push it.

We do not know what old age will hold, what will it be like, what abilities or faculties we will be left with but what we have control over is today and what we focus on whether that is mental or physical exercise. What I do know is how meaningful it is to remember what has happened over the course of your life and to be aware of those special memories that are yours and yours alone. In the end, what are we left with? We are left with our memories and hopefully it is more of an endless ocean than a single drop of water.

To focus today on making those memories with the people we care about and the things we enjoy doing will make old age that much sweeter. If your body one day gives out but your mind is still sharp, I think that is the better side of the deal. Obviously, it would be great to be fit as a fiddle and sharp as a tack until your last day, but I find that to be wishful thinking. I hope to remember who I am, what I’ve done, who I met, and most importantly who I loved when that time comes to reminisce and there aren’t many more memories to make.

Having memories in your mind that are fresh and seemed like they happened yesterday is the best you should hope for and what you can strive for by working today to strengthen your mental capacities as much as possible.  Your body at 70 is unlikely to be as good as your body at 70 but I’m a believer in the capacity of your mind at 70 to be as sharp as your mind at 20 within reason.

There are definitely outside factors to contend for in terms of your ability to retain your memories such as your genetic predisposition, your family history, and your own mind’s chemistry, but you can control a lot today through your own actions what memories you will be left with 50 years later. It also does not hurt to start writing down in a journal or diary on a daily basis or at least a weekly basis what happened in your life. This is especially the case if you live an exciting or an eventful life.

In addition, having photographs of yourself at different ages and in different places will jumpstart your memories and remind you of where you have been and what you did. Towards the end of your life, think of what you will have left. Yes, you will have your money, your possessions, and hopefully good physical health but I wish you also to remember deeply the memories you have made from different parts of your life and they are as vivid as possible. Your life towards the end of it should be like a cinematic movie of many parts, one as distinct from the other, and I hope you can look upon those memories you have made with great enjoyment and great fondness for what was and what it meant to you.