Certificate: TBC
Running Time: 90 mins
UK Distributor: Searchlight Pictures
UK Release Date: 10 January 2024
REVIEWED AT BFI LONDON FILM FESTIVAL 2024
Jesse Eisenberg, Kieran Culkin, Will Sharpe, Jennifer Grey, Kurt Egyiawan, Liza Sadovy, Daniel Oreskes, Ellora Torchia
Jesse Eisenberg (director, writer, producer), Ali Herting, Dave McCary, Ewa Puszczyńska, Jennifer Semler and Emma Stone (producers), Michał Dymek (cinematographer), Robert Nassau (editor)
Two American cousins (Eisenberg and Culkin) head to Poland for a Holocaust tour…
As the saying goes, comedy is tragedy plus time. We’ve found ways to laugh about some of the darkest events in history, whether it’s terrorist attacks or natural disasters, but when it comes to the Holocaust, there are understandably few who are willing to even touch upon it. For many, it remains an extremely upsetting topic, especially among comedians – and rightly so, for the mass murder of countless people holed up in concentration camps across Europe, many of them Jewish, is far from a laughing matter.
Some have tried over the years to find the humour in the horror, including Jerry Lewis’s infamous (and infamously unreleased) The Day the Clown Cried, but writer-director Jesse Eisenberg opts for a slightly different angle with his film A Real Pain, which ends up making all the difference. It all boils down to the simple fact that it isn’t the Holocaust that is funny, but rather people’s reactions to it, particularly those who might have descended from those unfortunate to have been inside one of those camps.
That actually does make for some plentiful laughs in this tender and rather touching comedy-drama about what it is to trace one’s ancestry, and not being particularly jazzed about what they learn, either about their ancestor or even themselves.
Eisenberg also stars as David, a New York graphic designer with a wife and young child, who we first meet heading to the airport and leaving countless voicemails for his cousin Benji (Kieran Culkin), even as he’s entering the terminal. We quickly learn that the two are flying to Poland, where their recently deceased grandmother lived when the Nazis invaded, and they have booked an extensive tour of numerous historical sites, including what remains of the local concentration camps.
The trip, however, becomes somewhat chaotic as the distant cousins’ wildly mismatched personalities and opinions tend to clash with their fellow tourists, as well as their ultimate purpose for the trip. While David is meek, reserved and ultimately not very interesting, Benji is far more energetic, quick to incite anticipation and excitement among others, and able to offer some valuable insight that genuinely inspires others – after he does nothing but yell at them to their face about it. They are a strange pair – an odd couple, if you will – but that might just be enough for both of them to reconcile with their past and future in this present.
The film certainly has the mannerisms of a standard road trip comedy, one with a bit more Holocaust imagery than usual, but Eisenberg manages to avoid a lot of the typical tropes with an underlying gentleness that cuts to the core of our two central travellers. Their radically different approaches to life are apparent from the moment they first meet at the airport, with Benji’s rapid-fire wit and playfulness easily overshadowing David who, like with most of Eisenberg’s on-screen personas, doesn’t have the courage to assert himself nearly as much. As the two find themselves in unfortunate positions, whether it’s missing their train stop or having an awkward encounter with locals, it is Benji who easily takes the lead while David, the more put-together of the cousins with his comfortable job and stable family, largely tags behind like an overly attached puppy. In his sparky and often very funny script, Eisenberg provides both characters with an equal footing that makes their mismatched nature more charming than potentially gruelling.
However, as the film goes on and we learn a little more about some of the pretty heavy stuff that one of them has recently gone through, we realise that both David and Benji are, in their own way, putting on a brave face as they face facts that are almost as upsetting as their late grandmother’s earlier experiences. In these moments, Eisenberg shows a surprisingly powerful directorial muscle that puts these characters’ tormented worldview into the spotlight without ever calling attention to them. The performances especially show how fractured they are, in particular Kieran Culkin who commands the screen at all times in a rollercoaster turn where you’re almost left exhausted after just five minutes of being in his company, but are no less fascinated by the confidence and determination he emits all the time.
Culkin and Eisenberg’s unusually effective double act is substantial enough to mask the script’s occasional uneventfulness, but one would argue that the point of A Real Pain is not to exactly feel like you’ve been on a complete journey with them. Instead, it’s as though you’ve been paired with two people, both very different from one another but connected by both blood and the care they have for one another, at a moment in their lives when they are dealing with a lot of stuff, and are only just beginning to unpack it all. It doesn’t need things happening all the time for you to feel as though you’ve been on a whirlwind journey with them, but you feel comfortable enough to laugh along with both of these people – even when on a historical site where some of the worst things that people can do to other people once occurred.
A Real Pain is a touching and funny road trip comedy-drama that sees writer-director Jesse Eisenberg find meaningful ways to address heavy topics such as the Holocaust and people’s reactions to it with a strong sense of humour, while on-screen he allows co-star Kieran Culkin to walk away with the entire thing in his arms.
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