A Real Pain (2024 | USA/Poland | 89 minutes | Jesse Eisenberg)
In his second feature, Jesse Eisenberg teams up with Kieran Culkin as a pair of mismatched cousins who meet after drifting apart to take a “heritage tour” through Poland. Having grown up together, their lives have diverged, but the deep affection is still there. As David, Eisenberg is his typical repressed anxiety bundle, curly hair barely contained by a bright red baseball cap (Indiana University, not that other kind). In the lead-up to their departure he packs like a pro and leaves a hundred voice message to his cousin who’s been chilling at the airport for hours just because they let you hang out there for free and you can see the craziest people.
Said cousin is Kieran Culkin as Benji, fresh off his Emmy-winning turn on Succession and still operating in such charismatic god mode that his chaotic selfishness is instantly forgiven. Less medicated than his cousin, he wears his melancholy on his sleeve and is — in the parlance of the film — the kind of guy who lights up a room just before shitting all over it. Benji’s been reeling from their grandmother’s death. She was a holocaust survivor who survived the camps through a series of unenumerated miracles and who found success in America. You get the sense that the whole family held her in a kind of terrified esteem (a Sundance theme), but that she may have been Benji’s best friend.
Her will’s the ostensible occasion for the cousins’ reunion. Partly to honor her wishes — but mostly based on Benji’s recent hard times — they’ve used some of their inheritance to take a guided tour through Poland, where she grew up, suffered, survived, and escaped. There, led by a chipper British tour guide who’s not Jewish (but who’s deeply inspired by their history), they awkwardly fit into a group that includes the likes of Jennifer Gray as a wealthy divorcee and Kurt Egyiawan as a survivor of the Rwandan genocide who found comfort in Canadian Judaism. The tour takes them through historic neighborhood, cemeteries, and a well preserved concentration camp heritage tour through Poland. There, along the way, they excavate traumas both generational and specific.
Eisenberg’s first feature was an uneven if heartfelt debut; his second finds him making a considerable leap of scope and execution. Each stop on the tour is photographed beautifully (Michal Dymek, who most recently made the donkeys of EO look like magic, serves as cinematographer) and Eisenberg puts the cousins in awkward situations, often of their own making. Culkin’s work is electric. He makes Benji a live wire of manic energy who befriends everyone in the group before driving them crazy. He’s the kind of guy who knows everyone’s story and motivates group pictures while David hangs back and gets stuck holding the cameras to take the pics. All the big feelings and mood swings cover a lingering melancholy, and Eisenberg the writer/director lets the details reveal themselves as naturally as they can for a couple of men gingerly becoming open to talking about their feelings. As exceptional as Culkin is in the spotlight, Eisenberg’s work as an actor shines with stifled frustrations, attempts to explain away his cousin’s misbehavior, and occasional explosions. To their credit, both characters feel richly realized, which makes their journey to dark places and dark history (as well as some great roof talks) feel all the more rewarding. It’s among the true gems of this year’s festival, no wonder it’s also one of the biggest acquisitions.
Review originally ran when A Real Pain played as an official selection of the U.S. Dramatic Competition at the 2024 Sundance Film Festival. It opens in Seattle theaters this weekend.
Image courtesy Sundance Institute.