A Real Pain

There are many actors that pivot towards directing, and often they have an uphill battle; some succeed more than others, and whether or not critics and audiences approve of their works will remain uncertain. Yet very few go onto auteur, highly renowned status, but you can think of the greats throughout time like Charlie Chaplin, Orson Welles, Woody Allen, Robert Redford, Warren Beatty, Greta Gerwig, and Clint Eastwood, to name just a few. Now comes the Jesse Eisenberg sophomore-directed feature film, A Real Pain. An original screenplay by Eisenberg where he delivers a brilliant comic drama that is remarkable on so many levels. Eisenberg has proved he is a full-fledged talent, with a brilliant use of character depth, sharp humor, pathos, and pacing. A film that recalls the work of Alexander Payne, Woody Allen, and Noah Baumbach in which he has worked with Allen and Baumbach before. Like those icons, Eisenberg merges the joy with the melancholy, and the result is a very thoughtful film about grief, emotional mourning, depression, anxiety, and familial bonding.

In it, two very smart, thoughtful, but flawed cousins are the main characters in this highly comedic and deeply moving film. These two cousins, neurotic graphic ad designer David Kaplan (Eisenberg) and jobless Benji Kaplan (Kieran Culkin), take a trip to Poland to pay tribute to their deceased grandmother, who was born in Polan, and a Holocaust survivor who migrated to America. Unlike other male bonding travel films like Sideways and Y Tu Mama Tambien, their goal isn’t to get laid but to grow their empathy and learn where their roots are. David appears to be happily married and has a young son that is very knowledgeable about buildings and landmarks, while Benji is a free spirit, a non-conformist who rejects the status quo of having a sustainable job and who lives life with spontaneity.

Courtesy Searchlight Pictures

Davis is far more reserved with a wet-blanket side, where Benji is more outgoing, but he wears his heart strongly on his sleeve. The two cousins end up meeting their tour guide named James (Will Sharpe), who is British and filled with a lot of facts about Poland and its history. They also meet fellow people from various ages and backgrounds in the tour group, which includes Marcia (Jennifer Gray), a single mother who is estranged from her adult children from Chicago; Eloge (Kurt Egyiawan), a survivor of the 1994 Rwandan genocide; and Mark (Daniel Oreskes) and Priya (Ellora Torchia), a Jewish married couple. Everyone is on the trip to not only learn about Jewish history but also to heal past wounds, and the journey becomes a very fundamental one for David and Benji.

It’s not as conventional as it sounds. While the film generates a lot of belly laughs throughout, the film actually feels like a week with family; after a few days we see their bad sides. The trip also brings out the cousin’s past wounds and old tensons from their family history. A lot of repressed emotions break loose, and Eisenberg delivers a lot of sincere pathos throughout that left me in tears. Benji often gravitates to hallucinogen substances to relieve anxiety and stress, as David struggles with his own insecurities of being socially awkward. Benji often speaks his mind and holds deep guilt and empathy about past tragedies like the Holocaust. He lashes out on a few occasions to the group about how they should hold guilt for their privileged wining and dining. Everyone has emotional tolls and some affliction.

Courtesy Searchlight Pictures

In that vein, Eisenberg gives his character and Culkin plenty of emotion to work, and there are many joys, heartbreaks, and payoffs. Culkin delivers a pitch-perfect performance here, one that I hope he is nominated for and wins Best Supporting Actor awards for in this superb performance. He really shines here; he was excellent in other films before, like Igby Goes Down, and Eisenberg is already a beloved indie actor, and now he is proving he is a reputable filmmaker with a lot of great potential. Early last year, I recommended his debut feature, When You Finish Saving the World, starring Julianne Moore, and Eisenberg’s performance in this will remain a highlight in his filmography going forward.

Most importantly, A Real Pain is a very smart and thoughtful film about two hurtful men who are grieving as they no longer have the person that meant so much to their upbringing in their life anymore. The way they talk about their diseased grandmother Dory is as if she is a character in the film. Even though she never appears in the film, not any flashbacks, you can sense just how strong of a woman she was and the impact she made on her two grandsons, as David and Benji’s sharply scripted discussions reflect that. This is certainly a film that holds deep empathy for its characters. Best of all, the film isn’t overly talky or dependent on just great performances to carry the film through. Eisenberg incorporates his cinematic training he has experienced before with many other great filmmakers, and he offers a lot of impressive visual touches throughout, including a ravishing rooftop scene and a clever montage of the cousin’s fare dodging on a train for the rush of it. There are stretches of silence throughout as well that give the film some wise internalizing that stimulates the film into further maturity and great artistry. Eisenberg also plays the Nocturne classical motifs by Frederic Chopin and Tzvi Erez that reminded me of Payne’s use of Erik Satie in About Schmidt.

Searchlight Pictures

The pacing is seamless as well. In one great sequence, the cousins visit a concentration camp, and you can almost hear the inner voices of the characters from their distraught and unease expressions on their faces upon the experience. Eisenberg really knows how to pull off some great performances; he taps into something deep with Kieran Culkin. There is something deeply personal going on with this performance. Eisenberg captures some very deep and authentic vulnerabilities, and Culkin’s performance is absolutely flawless. As a result of this, along with the terrific writing, directing, and story, Eisenberg has surely delivered one of the year’s best films.

A REAL PAIN is now playing in theaters