A Real Pain

Starring: Kieran Culkin, Jesse Eisenberg, Will Sharpe, Daniel Oreskes, Liza Sadovy, Kurt Egyiawan, Jennifer Grey

Director: Jesse Eisenberg

After the death of their grandmother, estranged cousins David (Eisenberg) and Benji (Culkin) take a trip to Poland to join a Holocaust tour and ultimately end their journey at their grandmother's former home. While David attempts to take a pragmatic approach to the tour, the free-spirited Benji has no filter and often allows the harder questions to be asked and erupts into inappropriate outbursts. As the tour progresses, David and Benji find themselves on a profound and emotional journey of self-discovery as they are forced to confront their past, present and future.

What an emotional rollercoaster this movie was! Credit where credit is due: Jesse Eisenberg has crafted a deeply personal, genuine and emotional film that knows when to embrace humor and when to let the audience just sit in the moment. You don't see many films like this where it's simple in its complexity. The movie is incredibly funny when it needs to be, but when the tour visits the concentration camp at Majdanek he lets his characters and the audience sit in the moment and let the emotions bubble to the surface. He also never lets the movie slip into melodrama, despite Benji's many outbursts and characters confronting their past.

While this isn't Eisenberg's directorial debut (that would be 2022's When You Finish Saving the World), he has clearly learned how to balance tone from the plethora of talented directors he has worked with. Eisenberg is often a polarizing actor, with him giving off an extreme air of pretentiousness or neuroticism. However in this film, that pretense is completely dropped as he gives his character David several moments of introspection and emotional catharsis I hadn't see from the actor before.

As good as Eisenberg is in the film, this is Kieran Culkin's show. As far as I am concerned, he is the frontrunner for Best Supporting Actor this year. The actor imbues Benji with a tragic sadness that helps the audience understand why he acts the way he does and, like the rest of the tour group, never hate him for it. A late in the game revelation about Benji and Eisenberg's realistic and honest reaction to it hit me in the feels. I haven’t felt this way about a scene in a film this year since the ending of Challengers.

A beautiful and emotional film with two fantastic lead performances, this is one that will stick with me for a while.

Grade: A