‘A Real Pain’ Is A Masterclass In Comedy And Tragedy [Review]

A Real Pain is a powerful comedy-drama about belonging and looking to history to find your present. Directed, written and starring Jesse Eisenberg, the film effortlessly balances belly laughs, the exploration of the Jewish identity and mental health.

The film follows two cousins looking to reconnect on a trip to Poland to learn about their Jewish heritage and visit the childhood home of their recently passed grandmother. David (Jesse Eisenberg) is a family man who sells digital ads for a living. Benji (Succession’s Kieran Culkin) is a loudmouthed slacker who still lives in his mother’s basement. Both come from the same place but look at the world through very different lenses.

The narrative starts like any other road trip movie, with two polar opposite people coming together in the airport. David is nervous, leaving hundreds of voicemails and worrying about the smallest detail, while Benji is an easy-going extrovert who announces he is taking weed with him on the trip and charms the TSA lady. 

When the duo arrive in Poland, they join a tour specifically catering to Jewish Americans. Their tour guide, James (Will Sharpe, doing a Richard Ayoade impersonation), is an Oxford history scholar who is not Jewish but finds himself fascinated with the Jewish experience. The cousins are joined by divorcee Marcia (Jennifer Grey), an older couple, Diane and Mark (Liza Sadovy and Daniel Oreskes) and Eloge (Kurt Egyiawan), who fled the Rwanda genocide and later converted to Judaism. 

These characters are merely there for Benji and David to bounce their insecurities from, underwritten and underexplored. The tour group exists as a way of seeing how people react to different types of mental health. David’s OCD and anxiousness make it hard for him to connect to new people, yet Benji’s extroverted manicness is seen as something more joyful. Whenever it does get awkward, Benji seems utterly indifferent to how others react to him. This indifference is especially noticeable when Benji encourages everyone to pose for photos in front of the memorial to the insurgents of the Warsaw Uprising. Kieran Culkin plays the character in such a lovable way it’s hard not to want to join in with his chaos. 

A Real Pain heavily relies on the performances of the lead two characters. Eisenberg plays his go-to anxious overachiever, worried his grief may disturb those around him. He is completely overshadowed by Culkin’s Benji, who delivers one of the most powerful performances of the year. Benji walks the thin line between charming and disarming, refusing to leave a single thought in his head, announcing every sentiment out loud to anyone who will hear it.

Benji initially appears the charming extrovert many of us wish we could be. He isn’t afraid to stop and speak to strangers, somehow managing to make those around him feel at ease even when being crude, rude and overly honest. David marvels as people laugh at his insults and warm to his brashness, while ignoring him for being quiet and respectful. 

As the story progresses slowly, the cracks are revealed beneath Benji’s wild grin. It’s an extraordinary depiction of manic depressiveness. It all comes to a head when Benji starts to explicitly criticize James’ tour, losing his cool frequently at the subdued British academic. He is holding onto his grief for his recently passed grandmother, which all bubbles to the surface in a tense and desperately sad dinner.

A Real Pain is immensely funny until it isn’t. It delivers real belly laughs as David and Benji reconnect and butt heads over the different paths their lives have gone. The pair were once as close as brothers, but the choices they made as adults led to their distance. The film could have been a poignant yet funny chalk-and-cheese tale of a duo reconnecting over their Jewish past. Eisenberg does something far more thoughtful and poignant than that. The script doesn’t waste a single second of its 90 minute runtime, speeding through Poland and the lives of these two cousins.

Anyone with a Benji will know that their behavior is wildly amusing until it becomes something sadder. The ups are wildly high and lows really low, and A Real Pain handles this with a sensitive hand. Kieran Culkin brings a nuance to a role which may be cartoony in someone else’s hands. There is a desperation to the humor, a desperate need to fill the emptiness with something meaningful so Benji isn’t left alone with his own thoughts. It leads to one of the most heart breaking closing shots in recent cinema, with Culkin delivering the most touching portrayal of male sadness since Paul Mescal’s Oscar-nominated turn in Aftersun. It would be a crime if A Real Pain and Kieran Culkin don’t make waves come award season.

Although Kieran Culkin steals every scene he is in, Eisenberg also gives a terrific performance. No stranger to a neurotic character, David subverts the anxious stereotype with his joyfulness. So often this type of character is portrayed as miserable and lonely, but David is far from that. He loves his life, with his adorable young daughter and loving wife, he even loves his marketing job despite Benji’s criticism. 

The Jewish element of A Real Pain isn’t pushed aside as a way to explore David and Benji’s relationship. The movie explores grief unique to second and third-generation immigrants. How do you process your middle-class lifestyle when your own grandmother faces such atrocities? Should Jewish people still be grieving their past and feeling guilty for their good days? Although the questions presented are specific to Jewishness, there are universal topics that will resonate with anyone with a background connected to immigration and colonization. This is perfectly addressed via Rwandan-born Eloge, who had to flee his own terrors to start a new life (the character is based on someone Eisenberg knows in real life).

The film was shot on location, which allows it to really shine a light on Poland’s Holocaust history. A trip to a concentration camp illustrates how close they were to the cities, and gives the space the silence and respect it deserves. Second time director Eisenberg and the cinematographer Michal Dymek capture the small moments of Warsaw, Lublin and the Polish countryside. The camera focuses on the modern hotels, Communist brutalism and graffiti, ignoring the beauty of the area.

A Real Pain is a masterclass at hitting audiences with emotions without even trying. Eisenberg never emotionally manipulates the audience, instead letting them fall in love with the characters and their nuances. It’s an empathetic and emotional tale about the guilt of becoming a successful third-generation immigrant, familiar love when you don’t always like each other, and the fact that looking at your history will never truly change who you are in the present day or what your future holds.

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