A Real Pain

For all the neuroticism of his Mark Zuckerberg and the awkward charm of Zombieland’s Columbus, Jesse Eisenberg has often displayed a big, beating heart too. Those two worlds collide in wordy travel dramedy "A Real Pain", his second film as writer-director (and, crucially, lead actor too). On the flip side to Eisenberg’s bumbling David is Kieran Culkin’s snarky Benji, two cousins reuniting in Poland on a Holocaust tour to reconnect with their family heritage, butting heads along the way: one who very much has his shit together, the other who really does not. Joking around one minute and at each other’s throats the next, the push and pull of this family dynamic is the film’s beating heart, as the two muse on generational trauma, grief, and the pain we all feel – all while Benji single-handedly pisses off every single person on the trip. A Real Pain has a dash of the Before films, but is very much an achingly sad and sharply-written Eisenberg original – a film for, and about, those who feel things a little bit too much.

But this is Culkin’s film, and the exposed nerve quality of his performance has already seen him richly rewarded, most recently with a Golden Globe. Benji works so well as a character because the actor offers equal attention to his skittish, surface qualities and the deeper turmoil that drives them. He’s funny and unpredictable at first, even a little antisocial, but it hurts when all the pieces finally click tragically into place.

How do they open themselves up to that history, to the suffering of their ancestors, while simultaneously squaring up their own privileges with the vast emptiness they feel inside? There’s no real answer to that question. So, "A Real Pain" stays honest. We end up back at the start.