By Marc S. Sanders
Sometimes I take notice of how the title and credits appear in a film. The director or the title supervisor had to put some thought into how the font and lettering appears on the screen at the start of a film. Woody Allen was always very simple with his basic white lettering centered on a black screen. Star Wars jumps at you across a galaxy of stars and then zooms away from you. The Godfather appears with that hand grasping strings of a marionette. I imagine writer/director Jesse Eisenberg opted to put the words A Real Pain to the left of Kieren Culkin’s closeup shot as the film begins. When it concludes, the title again appears but now it is to right of a nearly identical pose of the actor. During a five-day guided tour through Poland, we are accompanying the two leads, and we will uncover what defines a real pain all the way from left to right.
Eisenberg and Culkin portray Jewish cousins, David and Benji, who are reconnecting during their adulthood by joining a tour group in Poland that is focusing on historical locations related to the Holocaust. Their grandmother recently passed away and earmarked monies for them to take this trip and visit her childhood home that she lived in before the Nazis took over and erected the Warsaw Ghetto along with concentration camps that killed millions of Jews and Europeans by the command of Adolf Hitler. Their tour guide promises an informative but likely triggering experience for the men and the four others who are accompanying them. What becomes concerning though is that Benji wildly expresses himself during unexpected and inconvenient moments.
Even if David is uncomfortable with his cousin’s behavior, Benji is at least funny at first as he upstages James the tour guide (Will Sharpe) and gains a quick influence over the group. Later though, Benji will alarm and frustrate everyone. His grandmother was the most treasured person in his life. Now that she’s gone, there’s a deep void left for him, and he has been exceedingly hyperactive and perhaps harmful to himself. A train ride in the first class section is declared inappropriate to Benji as he reminds everyone of the purpose of this little vacation and journey into the dark times of Polish history. Should they be able to live so comfortably, eating the finest delicacies as they journey to places mired in deep suffering from a horrible past? David will eventually share what truly disturbs him personally, when he thinks about his cousin.
Kieren Culkin delivers one of the best performances you’ll find anywhere in 2024. His timing is so rhythmic even if you cannot predict when Benji is going to detract focus from the tour, and over towards what tremendously irks him. The comedy he delivers, from Eisenberg’s very intuitive and sensitive script, is quite amusing but it all stems from an anger and sadness that the character cannot contain. I can’t think of many actors who could play this kind of part. It’s like watching Robert DeNiro in one of his manic roles that he performed under Martin Scorsese, like in The King Of Comedy or Taxi Driver.
Jesse Eisenberg is worthy of accolades as well. He directs a heartbreaking monologue of his character trying to explain his cousin’s unhinged behavior. His focused composure eventually is shaken as he directs his camera to zoom in closer and closer to him, across a dinner table. David may have a sustained foundation of life with a loving wife and child back home, but he carries a pain that resides within his first cousin. Eisenberg’s script compliments his well-planned direction, and he handles every perfect beat of the man he plays from the schlubby way he dresses to the baseball cap he wears over his bushy hair. Despite their thirty-something ages, David and Benji connected as kids with their grandmother there for them. Now that she’s gone, the sorrow normally found in a kid does not live as comfortably well in an adult body.
A Real Pain will motivate you to book a flight to Poland. Eisenberg’s film works like a vivid travelogue and every backdrop is rich in color and restored history. That is until the tour group arrives at the Majdenak Concentration Camp. The horrors that played out here are preserved so that visitors will realize the most absolute cruelty that man is capable of. Other than the footsteps of the actors and the whisper of green nature on a sun-drenched day, no one speaks other than a few comments from James. We see a caged collection of old shoes that belonged to men, women and children who were imprisoned and died at this location. Eisenberg shows us the showers that gassed so many people to death. The walls are splotched in blue smears. Watch the film and you will discover their significance. Life size ovens are also on display. It’s terribly overwhelming.
What you may believe was a real pain in Benji no longer compares when the film arrives at the camp. It’s not so much that Benji is a pain. He only carries the pain that his grandmother and ancestors endured and witnessed.
Reader, just writing this out leaves me shaken, quite frankly.
There’s a wholesome feeling when the boys, who are now men, arrive at their grandmother’s childhood home. A spirit seems to talk to the pair and they share some dialogue but Jessie Eisenberg’s film also seeks some closure for his characters. I will not reveal what they do at the front door. Once I finished watching the picture, I read an insightful quote from Jesse Eisenberg regarding this scene. He says he was looking for David and Benji to do something that might have been most appropriate during a time when their grandmother lived here as a child, but now, nearly ninety years later, the gesture only serves as an inconvenience or a hazard. I could relate. History changes the course of how we live and abide. What seemed right to do at one point in life can no longer be accommodating at another time, regardless of if the sentiment was meant with noblest intention.
A Real Pain could be considered a coming-of-age film. The characters resort to sneaking on to rooftops to smoke pot or hitch a train ride without paying, or travel with the most basic duffel bags for a European trip. They dress like high school or college kids. One dresses primarily in blue and the other in red until a well-timed turn of events has the characters switch colors. Benji speaks with what appears to be a lack of respect for his elders, despite the intelligence and sensitivity in the points he makes. This trip allows the former boys to grow up, according to their grandmother’s design, long after her death.
Some people have told me they were unsatisfied with the open-ended conclusion to A Real Pain. Not me. Like the positioning of the film’s title at the beginning and end, I feel like I went on a journey from point A to point B; from left to right. I looked back in history and for a short while lived among a present period, in a different part of the world. These experiences are with me now. Yet, for a guy like Benji, he should not be less lonely or less melancholy or less of whatever he feels on any given day. His pain has not subsided. Maybe though, it feels more reasonable and accepting. I still carry empty places in my heart now that my parents are gone, and I’ve had to accept the surprising loss of a close friend. The way Benji or any of us learn to carry on is to find a justice for the pain and sorrow we carry under a new kind of normal.
David returns to the loving welcome of his wife and child. Only now, he has a better understanding of the real pain his cousin is experiencing and what his grandmother survived.
A Real Pain is worthy of more than just the two Oscar nominations it received (for Culkin’s performance and Eisenberg’s screenplay). It is one of best and most engaging films of the last few years. A triumph in natural dialogue and thought, while serving as a visual masterpiece in silent anger, sadness, and sensitivity.
What is especially evident is that Jesse Eisenberg is an accomplished director, and an even better writer. In addition, Kieran Culkin is a blazing dynamo of both comedic and dramatic talent. In A Real Pain, he wears both masks exceptionally well.
2 UNPAID MOVIE CRITICS!!!! 