Jesse Eisenberg talks about writing, directing and starring in the film A Real Pain. Eisenberg and Kieran Culkin play cousins who go to Poland on a Jewish Heritage Tour. One of the stops is the Majdanek death camp. He spoke with Terry Gross about questions the film raises. Also, we hear from Pamela Anderson. In the new film, The Last Showgirl, she stars as a veteran Vegas dancer who must face the end of her legendary show. She talked with Tonya Mosley about her big career comeback.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy
Chapter 1: What is Jesse Eisenberg's new film about?
And so, you know, I clicked on the ad, and it took me to a site for, you know, what you would imagine English-speaking –
heritage tour of Poland that culminates at Auschwitz and it was just so interesting just like posed all these interesting philosophical questions like you know why do we do tragedy tourism and why don't we try to connect to this kind of history in a way that feels less you know comfortable
Well, another question the movie raises is, like, what is real pain? Like, what is suffering? Like, if you're suffering from, you know, emotional or mental health issues, and I know you have issues of your own. The character has OCD. I don't know if that's an issue you have to contend with. But if you have your own internal suffering...
Let's face it, people take their lives because of that internal suffering. You don't even have to have somebody kill you. You end your own life because the suffering is so bad. But you haven't been in Auschwitz suffering there. Is your suffering any less important? Does that count as pain? Yeah.
Yeah, exactly. Like, you know, one of the kind of ironies with Kieran's character in the movie, you know, as you said, he kind of plays this incredibly charming and manic guy. But he also is just privately suffering from severe depression. I mean, severe, like, you know, you know, wondering if he wants to go on with his life.
And one of the dramatic ironies in the movie is that our grandmother survived, as I say in the movie, by a thousand miracles, you know, you know, the way my family survived. survived the war.
They were, you know, hidden in basements with their teachers, you know, like crazy stories as, as you know, from, you know, anybody who survived the Holocaust, there's usually a story that's, you know, incredibly shocking and more shocking than the last one you heard.
So like, there's this irony where we are the products of a thousand miracles and yet Kieran's character doesn't even know if he wants to live. And what is that? Why do we walk around with all this modern pain when our lives are materially comfortable after being the products of incredible stories of survival?
And it's something I think about all the time because I'm, like, you know, a depressed person or whatever. And, you know, like, I walk around and I have, like, a materially nice life. And I walk around kind of, like, you know, feeling bad for myself, being miserable over, you know, minor things. And yet I'm also incredibly, like...
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Chapter 2: How does Jesse Eisenberg explore the theme of pain in his film?
That's exactly it. So, you know, this place, Majdanek, is in Lublin. So it's in the southeast of the country. Lublin is this really bustling, gorgeous, vibrant college town. And five minutes away from this, again, gorgeous, bustling, you know, cosmopolitan college town is this death camp. And when I say five minutes, that's not hyperbole.
Like, you drive five minutes down the road, and you are in this death camp. And so... It's not a real known one, but what makes Majdanek really interesting, as opposed to Auschwitz, is that it's so far east that the Russians liberated the camp before the Nazis could really destroy it.
So the other camps, as you go further west in Europe, were destroyed by the Nazis as the Soviets or the Americans liberated the camps. But this one, as we say in the movie, is kind of well-preserved, for lack of a better phrase. It looks like it was liberated that morning.
You became a Polish citizen, so what moved you to do that?
Yeah. So, like, I imagine you're probably familiar with, like, the reputation that Poland has amongst, like, kind of American Jews, which is that, you know, I grew up hearing, oh, they're anti-Semitic and, you know, they're, you know, all the death camps were there, you know. But my experience there was so different. My experience there was really different.
Kind of revelatory in the following way. We were going to all these sites of Jewish history, of Jewish, you know, horror. And all the people that I met who were working there were like, you know, 90% non-Jews, people who had spent their lives doing far more to memorialize my family's history than I or anybody in my family is doing.
And I just had this great feeling of indebtedness to the Poles who have done a really good job of preserving a lot of this history. I know they're criticized in various ways and the government's criticized in various ways, but like... The Germans built these camps in Poland and the Poles are still left with these things, you know, and they're really well done to preserve Jewish history there.
And I just felt this kind of like just open hearted indebtedness to that.
My guest is Jesse Eisenberg. He wrote, directed, and stars with Kieran Culkin in the film A Real Pain. We'll hear more of the interview after a break. I'm Terry Gross, and this is Fresh Air Weekend.
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