Jesse Eisenberg’s A Real Pain is a buddy film, a road trip movie, a fish out of water story and an odd couple tale. There’s lots of convenient ways to attach a handle to this film, but this is a picture that manages to make a familiar storyline smart and surprising. It’s a movie about family and history and deep grieving that somehow also includes some of the funniest moments I’ve recently seen on screen.
David (Eisenberg) and Benji (Kieran Culkin) Kaplan are cousins born only a few weeks apart. The pair grew up like brothers during their childhoods. But as adults, David’s become a workaholic with a career in digital marketing. Benji is a free-spirited empath, a melancholy dreamer prone to manic streaks. When the young men lose their beloved holocaust-survivor-grandmother she leaves them enough funds to travel to Poland to see her childhood home and visit Auschwitz. The movie features a small ensemble traveling together during a week-long holocaust tour. It’s a somber procession, drenched in memories and reflections, but Eisenberg’s sharp script has awkward David and chaotic Benji constantly undercutting the mood to hilarious effect. The results are a don’t-miss, actorly drama punctuated by hilarious hijinks and laugh-out-loud line readings.
A Real Pain is also a film The Contributor’s readers will want to seek-out, because of how it handles homelessness onscreen in a movie that’s not primarily about homelessness. It’s one of the most subtle details in this subtle story which never commits any sins of clunky exposition or barrages its viewers with info montages. Eisenberg trusts his audience to follow along, and he gives viewers every reason to watch these characters closely as their relationships and their shared journey unfold naturally. The details of a life-lived without a home simply emerge without commentary, sad and mysterious, but refreshingly normalized and simply integrated into the film’s realistic tableau of hotel rooms, restaurants, train cars, markets, monuments, parks and airports.
A Real Pain feels very Woody Allen-esque from the comic awkwardness of Eisenberg’s David character to the Chopin score. (Allen is still making strong movies, but the controversies in his personal life mean his films don’t generate the attention they used to.) Eisenberg deploys a montage of details of Polish architecture set to classical music that feels just like Allen’s celebrations of New York cityscapes set to Gershwin in his masterpiece, Manhattan. Eisenberg’s scenes feel almost beyond homage at times, but he’s so effective at aping Allen that it doesn’t really matter. David and Benji’s inappropriate actions, outbursts and asides are comic gold and the film’s balance between deep human interactions and uproarious happenings is deft and satisfying, and it gives this film an emotional breadth that makes it feel much bigger than its small ensemble and 90-minute runtime.
Kieran Culkin’s performance deserves all of its awards buzz, and A Real Pain is a big win for Eisenberg whose writing and directing prove to be as smart, funny and authentic as his best performances as an actor. He’s published short stories, written plays and audio dramas, and he made his feature directorial debut with When You Finish Saving the World (2022). Eisenberg isn’t just another actor with a craving for the director’s chair. He’s a legitimate storyteller who understands how photography and music dance together. His directs actors like a great actor can, and his writing moves confidently and effectively from painful confessions to awkward circumstances to hilarious interactions, and even happy-ish endings that don’t feel contrived or premeditated.
A Real Pain is currently streaming on Hulu.
Joe Nolan is a critic, columnist and performing singer/songwriter based in East Nashville. Find out more about his projects at www.joenolan.com.