The script of A Real Pain is a striking blend of humor, raw emotion, and existential reflection, making it both deeply memorable and profoundly human. Jesse Eisenberg crafts dialogue that feels effortlessly real—quick-witted banter masks deeper pain, while casual conversations spiral into poignant meditations on history, identity, and the weight of generational trauma. The characters’ interactions are laced with biting sarcasm and sibling-like antagonism, yet at their core, they reveal an unspoken love and shared vulnerability. Through its sharp dialogue, the film captures the complexities of personal and cultural memory, the absurdity of modern life, and the uncomfortable yet necessary confrontation with history. It’s a script that lingers, not just because of what is said, but because of what is left unsaid.

Quotes from the movie A Real Pain by Jesse Eisenberg (2024) with Kieran Culkin, Jesse Eisenberg, and Olha Bosova.

– Yeah, but they open the airport super early. You can just come here and hang out.
– Wow. Okay.
– Mm-hmm. You meet the craziest fucking people here, dude.

They’re gonna arrest two Jews in Poland for a little bit of weed? That’s a good look for the Polish people.

– You still, like, sellin’ shit online?
– I mean, I don’t, like, sell used jerseys on eBay. I do, like, digital ad sales.

– So, you know, when you see, like, an ad banner online?
– Oh, yeah. God, I hate that shit.
No, no. No, I just mean, like, everybody hates that shit, you know. Mm, yeah. – – Do they?

– You’re just, like, part of a fucked-up system.
– I mean, without online ads, actually a lot of the websites that you visit for free wouldn’t be able to exist. It’s kind of like the lifeblood of the Internet.
– Hey, dude, dude.
– Yeah.
– I think they want us to pay attention.
– Yeah, no, I just wanted to, like, finish the story.
– Yeah, yeah. No. It’s just… It’s just kind of rude, man.

– What the hell is that?
– Oh, it’s the weed. I told you. It’s, like, really good stuff. I got it from Todd. This fucking barber in Ithaca.
– Wait. You mailed yourself weed?
– No, man. I mailed us weed.
– Are you serio… I thought you were, like, taking it through the airport.
– Really?
– Yes, really. Did you not see how nervous I was?
– No, I did. I just thought that was you.

– I never really evaluated them, I guess.
– You never evaluated your own feet?
– No.
– Come on, dude. They’re graceful as fuck. Look at ’em. They remind me of Grandma’s feet.
– You remember Grandma’s feet?
– ‘Course I remember Grandma’s feet. She always wore those pink plastic fuckin’ sandals from Target. She used to strut that shit all over town.
– Really?
– You know, sometimes I look at you.
– Yeah?
– I see her.
– I look like an old Jewish woman?
– No, man, you look wise. And I don’t know, it’s beautiful.

I’m not myself Jewish, but I’m completely obsessed with this whole part of the world, and in particular the Jewish experience, which I find to be fascinating and complex and, at times, tragic, but ultimately beautiful.

Sorry, if I’m oversharing, but I found that I was turning into the kind of woman I detested. Just like a lady who lunches basically, you know?

My mother survived the camps and, uh, she never talked about it. Ever. So, I’m here to honor her.

A zloty for anyone who can guess which one of us is older.

Grandma Dory, she was from here. Um…
And we’ve always wanted to see where she came from and… and see the house that she grew up in.

– He’s got this, like, high-pressure job selling fucking ad banners to the Internet.
– Yo, come on, man.
– But he knew I was in a real shit place recently, so he… swooped in and dropped everything and arranged for us to join this…
– Mm-hmm.
– Geriatric Polish tour with you fine people.

I will be taking us to a concentration camp, so I think it’s important to immediately dispel the myth that these were a people who were led like lambs to the slaughter.

– Now, it may seem obvious, but a word of warnin’, this will be a tour about pain.
– Of course, it will.
– Pain and suffering and loss, there’s no getting around that, but I think it’s important that it’s also a tour that celebrates a people. A most resilient people.

I guess, that’s, like, the essence of America, people created from other cultures.
But, like, in some parallel, black hole universe, you and I are Polish and we probably got, like, long beards and we can’t shake hands with women.

That woman, Marcia. She’s walkin’ alone. We should go talk to her.

– I think we should check on her.
– Benji, maybe she wants to be alone.
– No one wants to be alone, Dave.

– Weird soup, right?
– I fucking love it.

I think the most bizarre and harrowing aspect is not the German crushing of the rebellion, but the part that the Russians played in it.
You see, the Russians and the Poles were supposedly allies.
Brothers in arms fighting against a common enemy.

– Uh, we should pose with the guys. It’ll be hysterical.
– Uh, doesn’t that seem, like, disrespectful or…
– Fuck is that disrespectful? We’re on their side. Fightin’ the fucking Russkies and the Krauts. Come on.

– Gonna be dropped out of the plane. Or are you the actual plane?
– I guess I am the plane.
– Then you’re a plane.

Maybe they don’t make their roof accessible for American assholes trying to smoke weed?

You just needed a little drugs in your system. That’s all.

You… are like an awesome guy stuck inside the body of somebody who’s always running late.
I gotta fish that fuckin’ guy out of you every time I see you.

You had, like, a job and a wife. You’d been awake all day doing important shit.
I didn’t really have anything going on.
I didn’t care that you fell asleep, man.
I was just glad you were there.

You don’t feel weird being in a first-class car?

Dude, we are Jews on a train in Poland.
Fucking think about it.

Like eating fancy food and sitting up here, when 80 years ago, we would’ve been herded into the backs of these fucking things like cattle.

You’re raising an interesting sensitivity here. It does sometimes come up on these tours.
You’re staying in fancy hotels, eating posh food, and at the same time, you’re looking back at the horrors of your family history.

– Why is that, like, important now?
– Oh, man, you used to, like, feel everything, man. He was such an anxious, adorable fucking kid, man.

He’s like all put together and comfortable and shit.

– I’m gonna go to the back of the train now, okay?
– I don’t think you’ll find much suffering back there either.

People can’t walk around the world being… happy all the time.

– Sorry. You mean we… we passed Lublin already?
– Like, a while ago.
– And you didn’t wake me up?
– Oh, you were having such a good nap, dude.

This is my cousin Davey. I’m not ashamed of him.
This is Davey on the bench in Chinatown.
This is the guy I used to have all to myself.
I just couldn’t wake you, man.

Man, what’s stupid is the corporatization of travel.
Ensuring that the rich move around the world, propagate their elitist loins, while the poor stay cut off from society.

It was our country. They kicked us out ’cause they thought we were cheap.

– We’re in first class.
– Yeah, but we fucking earned it.

Lublin has such a rich Jewish history. It was actually known, for a time, as the Jewish Oxford.
It was diverse, both culturally and intellectually.
This is the Lublin of Rebbe Horowitz, of the Seer of Lublin, of Isaac Bashevis Singer, merchants, writers, poets.

Money is like fucking heroin for boring people.

I find myself constantly baffled by the way the world seems to carry on like there aren’t a million reasons to be shocked.

– I don’t know. I mean, if, like, we wept for every sad thing in the world, like, what would that accomplish?
– I don’t know. Maybe sad shit wouldn’t constantly happen.

David, we numb ourselves to avoid thinking about our impact.

Ignoring the proverbial slaughterhouse to enjoy the steak, as it were.

We’re on a fucking Holocaust tour.
If now is not the time and place to grieve, to open up, I don’t know what to tell you, man.

So, there’s some discrepancy about the founding of the cemetery, but most people have it pegged at 1541… That’s before the founding of the United States. That’s before, I don’t know, Shakespeare.

And, Eloge, you, like, totally know your shit, but I think it’s just the constant barrage of stats. It’s making this whole thing feel very cold, you know?

It’s real? Then how come I haven’t met anyone that’s actually Polish?

This is the oldest tombstone in all of Poland.
Erm, and it belongs to a man called Jacob Kopelman Levi, who was a real human person who lived, er, in the real world. He was Polish.
Er, from Poland.
And Benji and I were just discussing what might be nice to do, and we thought maybe we could all put a stone on his grave.
Erm, various theories about this Jewish tradition.
But personally, I like to think it’s just a simple warm gesture to say, er, “You’re not forgotten.”

Mark’s great uncle came off the boat from Poland, landed in Galveston for some fakakta reason.
Jew in Texas. And he made money by taking the furniture the rich people threw out on the street, refurbishing it and reselling.

Apparently, he ended up selling some of it back to the original owners.

And a similar story, she survived the camps through, like, a thousand miracles,
and she made her way to New York, and she wanted to design dresses.
But she couldn’t afford fashion school, so she got stuck working as a secretary.
Yeah. And then she was like, “Fuck this.” And she ended up taking over the whole company.

– In fact, she used to tell me that, like, you know, uh, first-generation immigrants work some, like, menial job.
You know, they drive cabs, they deliver food.
Second generation, they go to good schools and they become, like, you know, a doctor or lawyer or whatever.
And the third generation lives in their mother’s basement and smokes pot all day. I mean…
– She said that?
– I think she was, like, just speaking generally about, like, the immigrant experience.
– Because I lived in my mom’s basement.

I mean, he’s always been, like, up and down, you know?
Like, he’s sensitive and he, like, sees people so clearly, you know?
But then you say the wrong thing and, like, something switches.

– Well, he’s clearly in pain.
– Yeah, but isn’t everyone in pain in some way? I mean, look at what happened to our families. Look at where we came from.

I… I love him
and I hate him
and I want to kill him.
And I want to be him, you know?
And I feel, like, so stupid around him, you know, because he is so fucking cool, and he just does not give a shit.
And then… just, like, being here with him
is just so fucking baffling to me, you know?
It’s just baffling ’cause it’s, like, how did this guy come from the survivors
of this place, you know?
I mean that your uncle had to sell, like, used furniture to rich assholes or, like, couldn’t get into medical school.
And that you survived, like, the worst thing to happen on this planet in the last 30 years.
And that our grandma survived by a thousand miracles when the entire world was trying to kill her, you know?
And I look at him and I just, like, wanna ask him…
I just wanna ask him, and I just can’t.
Like…
Like, how did the product of a thousand fucking miracles overdose on a bottle of sleeping pills?

Have been forwarded to an automated voice messaging system.
“Boner.” Is not available.
The mailbox is full and cannot accept any messages at this time.

So, the first thing you might notice is that Majdanek is literally just two miles from Lublin town square.
Can you imagine life continuing on, a bustling town center just two miles from these grounds?

I might be a little bit sparser with my information overload today.
This is a sacred site where many thousands were murdered, and I think you’ll find this place kinda speaks for itself.

“He grabbed his whip
“and herded us towards the bathhouse.
“There, once our hair was cut and shaved
“from our entire bodies,
“we went into the next room.”

This is the gas chamber.
The blue stains on the walls are residue
from the deadly gas, Zyklon B.

I’m gonna miss all you guys. Like a weird, fucked-up family.

– You’re a good guy, Benji. No. You are.
– Do you mean that? Really?
– Yes, I do. Lech leh-shalom.
– Thanks. Travel safe.
– Go in peace, my friend.
– Oh, fuckin’ A. That means a lot to me. I’m gonna look up what that means.

– And you’re the first person ever to give me actionable feedback, so… thank you so much for that, yeah.
– Get the fuck outta here. What did I say?
– What are you talking about?
– You know, the stuff about engaging with Polish people and the Polish culture and…
– Oh, man, that sounds great. You should fucking do that, man.

You’re a very honest man, and that’s rare.

– Can we get something to eat that’s, like, not pickled?
– Pierogies?
– Anything that’s not pierogies and not pickled.
– Sauerkraut?
– Sauerkraut is… it’s pickled and German.

I don’t wanna lose you, okay?
Do you see how people love you?
Do you see what happens when you walk into a room?
I would give anything to know what that feels like… man.
To know what it feels like to have charm.
To light up a room when I walk in.
But you light up a room and then you, like, shit on everything inside of it.

– “Mag-is-trate.” What do you think that means?
– Probably magistrate.

– I think it’s this.
– Here?
– Yeah.
– Twenty-five.
– Oh, my God.
– Whoa. Is that possible?
– It’s so… unremarkable.
– Yeah. I guess I don’t know what I pictured.

– You know she slapped me once, right?
– What?
– Yeah. Grandma slapped me.
– Shit. Really?
– Yeah. I was late to meet her for dinner. Just, like, 15 minutes.
– Yeah.
– Also, I was pretty high. It was at that Hudson restaurant on Third Avenue. You know, in the purgatory of Murray Hill.
– Yes, I know it. Shit. Did it hurt?
– The fuck, yeah, it hurt. Yeah.
– Wow.
– It was the best thing that ever happened to me. I was, like, elated for a full 24 hours after that.
– Really? Why?
– I don’t know why.
I mean, it was at this fucking restaurant she went to every week. Everyone knew her there. She dressed up all formal for it like it was some big fucking occasion, and… I don’t know.
I guess the fact that she cared more about me than what the people at the restaurant thought?
I don’t know. Made me feel good.

– Let’s put a stone on the stoop.
– What do you mean?
– I mean, let’s find a little stone and put it on the stoop to say that we were here. That she’s not, you know, forgotten.

I’m sorry, but, um, I understand your situation.
But my father said that it is, uh, a hazard to leave the stones.

– You know what? I think I’m probably just gonna kick it here for a little while.
– At the airport?
– Yeah. Kinda like it here. You meet the craziest people, man.