“There is no greater Fuck You in all the world than an old Jew lying in some forgotten graveyard in Europe with a tombstone dated 1946. Fuck. You.” 

This line comes from Joshua Harmon’s play Prayer for the French Republic, and the new movie A Real Pain strikes a related chord.

Similar to how that “old Jew” outlasting Hitler stands in defiance of everything he represents, the same can be said of the two lead characters in A Real Pain. Hitler dedicated his whole life to killing that old Jew, to prevent the likes of Jesse Eisenberg and Kieran Culkin from ever existing.

But not only are they existing, what they’re choosing to do is a Fuck You to Hitler’s agenda. They’re voluntarily vacationing through once-occupied Nazi territory, cracking dirty jokes, being goofs, partying it up, and just generally having a fucking blast, without incurring the wrath of antisemitism.

In fact, their behavior — and a lot of the movie’s tone — are so removed from the Holocaust’s customary solemnity that the incongruity of this juxtaposition could feel disrespectful, and maybe even downright offensive. Blue humor, in a movie about the profoundly-unhumorous Holocaust?

But this is A Real Pain’s real Fuck You to Hitler. These non-gentile, ungentle, and sometimes-ungentlemanly gents are so liberated from the reality Hitler wanted that his darkness does not define their time on his former land. Their ancestors persevered so that they can feel comfortable yucking it up in Poland.

And how far we’ve come is a Fuck You to the Nazis.