Exploring Generational Trauma in Film

A Real Pain is a film starring Jesse Eisenberg and Kieran Kulkin as two American Jewish cousins who take a trip to Poland to visit the childhood home of their grandmother. In this episode of On the Nose, editor-in-chief Arielle Angel, contributing editor Maia Ipp, and author Menachem Kaiser—all of whom are grandchildren of Holocaust survivors—dissect the movie’s depiction of millennial neuroses, its relationship to other Holocaust films, and its grappling with the question of how to make meaning out of inherited memory. 

Thanks to Jesse Brenneman for producing and to Nathan Salsburg for the use of his song “VIII (All That Were Calculated Have Passed).”

Texts Mentioned and Further Resources:

“Selling the Holocaust,” Arielle Angel, Menachem Kaiser, and Maia Ipp, Jewish Currents

“(Re)Writing Remembrance,” Arielle Angel and Maia Ipp, Jewish Currents

Plunder: A Memoir of Family Property and Nazi Treasure, Menachem Kaiser

“If I were a Zionist, I'd be Z: How Generations of Jews have Abandoned their Children to Face the Reckoning Alone,” Natasha Gill, Substack

Between the Temples