KIERAN CULKIN, JESSE EISENBERG IN A REAL PAIN

Two Jewish cousins revisit their family origins in Poland

Jesse Eisenberg costars in his sophormore directorial outing here. After playing a great variety of roles and receiving acclaim as an actor, he draws on his own background, playing a man called David Kaplan who is an American Jew with a grandmother who was a Holocaust survivor from Poland, and at her demise has left money to pay for a trip with his cousin Benji (Kieran Culkin) to visit the house where she lived in Lublin, as well as Majdanek, nearby, the concentration camp she survived. We must survive the outlandish performance of Culkin, which ramps up several notches his (justiably) award-winning shtick as Roman Roy on HBO's addictivre series, "Succession."

Most people love Kieran Culkin's work as Benji here, but it's so obtrusive (and borderline offensive, especially for his use of F-words in every line) that it steals the picture, which seems a shame. There was a place for gentle humor here, especially considering the solemn subject matter. Nonetheless it has to be confessed that this movie is vivid and works and is a great improvement over Jesse's directing debut, When You Finish Saving the World.

There is no disputing that Kieran Culkin is a remarkable actor. His Benji, as fluently written by Eisenberg, is a bold, complex character, penetrating and outrageous in his remarks and observations, funny, charming. He frequently undercuts his own charm by causing offense to people the pair encounters. These notably include members of the little Polish Holocaust tour David and Benji join, then depart from. It includes a tight-lipped older couple, a recently single woman from California, an even quieter couple, an African-born Jewish convert, and the non-Jewish, occasionally droll British tour guide, James (Will Sharpe).

It's made clear both from things explicitly stated by David and from sad bookending shots of him sitting alone pre and post trip in the New York airort that Benji is in transition, or simply adrift, and things have gone very badly earlier in the year, and he lives in his mom's basement. In contrast David has what appears a very lucrative job selling digital advertising and lives comfortably in New York City with his wife and small child. Benji debunks the job as the lowest thing you could do; David defends it as essential to the very existence of the internet.

Benji may have been fun for Eisenberg to write because he can go anywhere at any time he wants with the character. For instance, when the cousins and the tour members are on a a posh train in Poland, Benji suddenly thinks of how Jews were shipped to their deaths in cattle cars and insists on running out of the first class compartment. Then later when David falls asleep next to Benji (a recurrant theme) in another car and they have to jump another train to get back to their meeting point, Benji insists they do this without paying, and when they sneak into a first class car he says they've "earned it."

Eisenberg is seeking to convince us that a neuro-divergent type like Benji deserves our sympathy and respect and can provide us with insight. David puts up with him, despite apologizing to the tour members. They tolerate, even like, him, and James thanks him for his ruthless criticisms of his performance as a guide for being too weighed down by "facts" and not enough "reality," and pledges to reshape his methods accordingly.

This is a movie that amuses, provokes, and teaches, and Eisenberg carries off the teaching part without ever seeming pedantic or stodgy. As wild as some moments get, we are still always firmly in the "reality" of a Polish Holocaust tour. We get to see relevant cities and sites (including the concentration camp) exactly as they look today. What swings my views toward approval of the film are David's speeches, in which Eisenberg unobtrusively provides sane balance so that somehow it all works and you may think maybe Culkin's outrageous turn was after all actually more amusing than offensive.

A Real Pain, 90 mins., debuted at Sundance; shown also at Aspen, Zurich, BFI London, and the NYFF, where it was screened for this review for an Oct. 5, 2024 showing. Release in ten countries scheduled for early 2025; in the US, Nov. 1, 2024. Metacritic rating: 84% (based on 19 reviews). 1/14/25: it's up to 86%, and A Real Pain is now at number 9 in Gold Derby's list of top 10 features pre-Oscar.

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©Chris Knipp. Blog: http://chrisknipp.blogspot.com/.