Jesse Eisenberg’s second outing in the writer-director chair is a meditation on grief and historical pain that manages to evade the Hollywood question-answer cliche.
A Real Pain follows two Jewish American cousins who travel through Poland after their grandmother dies, with the hopes of better understanding her by understanding the hardships she endured.
Grief is A Real Pain
The film follows David (Eisenberg) and Benji (Kieran Culkin) as they reconnect through the recent death of their grandmother and embark on a Holocaust tour after not seeing each other for six years. The pair is close, but they’re also direct opposites. David is a tightly wound tech worker bee with a wife and child in New York, and Benji is a drifter still living in his grandmother’s basement. Benji always says what’s on his mind.
Where the two differ most is in their approach to dealing with their grief. Benji wears his emotions on his sleeve, his grief included. David doesn’t believe in mythologising his grief – everybody goes through pain so he doesn’t want to burden others with it.
David’s insistence on downplaying his emotions drives Benji mad. Benji remembers when they were younger and it was the anxious David who was more emotionally expressive. But even Benji is capable of taking things too far, occasionally needing David’s restrained reason, and they have to navigate the tour together with this difficult dynamic.
The tour is headed by the affable James (Will Sharpe), who occasionally frustrates Benji with his untimely info dumps. Fellow tourists include husband and wife Diane and Mark (Liza Sadovy and David Oreskes), recent divorcee Marsha (Jennifer Grey), as well as actual genocide survivor Eloge (Kurt Egyiawan).
Kieran Culkin dominates most scenes. He manages to play a character reminiscent of his Succession character without it feeling like a retread. There’s a pained openness to Benji that Culkin is adept at tapping into, even if it’s not far off the kinds of characters he usually plays. Eisenberg likewise gives a great performance, but his performance is a bit over-restrained.
The juxtaposition of the easy comfort of the tour and its horrific subject matter was one of Eisenberg’s biggest interests in exploring this story. David and Benji have to reflect on how much easier things are for them than they were for their grandmother and her people, and how much different (and softer) they’ve become.
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A Real Pain avoids Hollywood cliches by not trying to neatly tie its theme of grief in a bow. By the end, we’re not really sure that these characters aren’t going to revert to their old ways. What we do know is they experience some kind of catharsis after the trip, they’re ready to move on as better versions of themselves.
Eisenberg’s theatre writing experience shines with his ability to hone in on characters, also making minor characters feel real with just a few lines. There’s plenty of quirky odd human moments that are touching without being campy. With the assistance of cinematographer Michał Dymek, A Real Pain looks cinematic. The shots are well thought out and intentional.
A Real Pain verdict
A Real Pain is a character-driven piece. There really isn’t much of a grand narrative besides these two cousins going through the motions of grief and coming out just a little bit closer on the other side. The film’s treatment of grief not as a problem to be solved but a process to experience, is oddly cathartic for anyone who knows how enduring grief can be.
A Real Pain opens in theatres this Friday, 24 January.
