A Real Pain: The Mend of the Tour

Priming his Holocaust tour group for the fraught experience that awaits them, the guide doesn’t mince words: “There’s going to be a lot of pain.” But he also advises his company not to wallow in despair, and to take heart in the stories of the many Jews who survived their horrific ordeal in 1940s Europe, even as countless more were exterminated. A Real Pain, the second directorial feature from Jesse Eisenberg, isn’t so clumsy or didactic as to trace the contours of this historical tragedy onto the map of its own, infinitesimally smaller story. But it does mirror the guide’s message in the sense that it traffics in solemn, heavy emotions while deploying a tone that’s light and even playful. It’s a comedy about grief, or perhaps a tearjerker about joy.

The movie’s title carries an obvious double meaning—maybe even triple. The more literal (if still intangible) connotation refers not just to the suffering of the Holocaust but to the depression of Benji (Kieran Culkin), the vibrant yet plainly wounded young man who’s still mourning the death of his beloved grandmother. Having rousted himself from his mother’s basement couch in Binghamton, Benji has traveled for an edifying vacation in Poland, where he immediately imposes his indefatigable will upon his fellow tourists. He’s charming but also exhausting—the kind of guy who, upon learning that a different group member (Kurt Egyiawan) once fled the Rwandan genocide, shouts “Oh snap!” then clarifies, “I meant that in a good way.” Benji is unfiltered and undeniable, a combustible mixture that makes him both the most effervescent person in the room and also—to return to the title—a genuine nuisance.

Or maybe the real real pain is David, Benji’s weary cousin, a nebbishy bundle of nerves whose surface civility and patent intelligence mask deep-seated insecurity—you know, kind of like Jesse Eisenberg. If Benji has never relinquished his inner child, David has assumed the heavy mantle of adulthood (he’s reluctant to leave his wife and young son), which means he’s considerably more mature and a whole lot less fun. Benji, with his scruffy beard and unforced laugh, is a creature of instinct and charisma; David, red IU hat clamped snugly atop his “Jew-fro,” embodies hesitation and analysis. The pleasurable, somewhat predictable narrative arc of the movie explores the push-pull relationship between these contrapuntal kinsmen—how Benji will chip away at David’s fusty defense mechanisms and encourage him to embrace life, and how David will uncover the anxiety and sadness that lie beneath Benji’s carefree bravado.

So, a familiar mismatched buddy comedy? Not exactly. To begin with, A Real Pain situates itself in a decidedly specific milieu—namely, the understated beauty of Poland and the lingering horror of the Majdanek concentration camp. Aesthetically speaking, Eisenberg’s style isn’t flashy; he lets the power of his location speak for him, as in a muted shot that finds hundreds of dirty shoes piled in a cage, the observers looking on in stricken silence. (Some cinephiles’ brains will surely flash on the ending of The Zone of Interest.) He is also less interested in images than words—how speech can convey both information and emotion.

The dialogue in A Real Pain is fast-paced and often very funny, with sharp rhythms and buoyant warmth. (Spying an isolated member of their group (Jennifer Grey!?), Benji strides up to her and asks, “Why’re you walking alone, are you a big fucking loser?”) It also functions as a blunt vehicle for communicating the characters’ mental states. Benji, for all his bubbly energy, grows increasingly erratic as the tour progresses; he lashes out at their guide, James (Will Sharpe), for his obsession with statistics, and he alienates his fellows with his belligerent insistence that they connect more spiritually with the Jews who preceded them, rather than vacantly admiring a series of preset attractions.

Does he have a point? Maybe, though as James counters, visiting preset attractions is a tour’s whole purpose. Still, the movie goes a little too easy on Benji, treating him more as a truth-telling hero than a damaged soul with psychological scars. The scene where James thanks Benji for his honest feedback is touching—bonus points for his perfunctory “See ya, David!” a cruel but amusing counterpoint—but it also feels like a false win for a young man who’s known nothing but loss.

Then again, A Real Pain takes great pains care to resist black-and-white sentimentality, preferring to operate in grey areas of uncertainty. This doesn’t mean it’s unsatisfying; there’s a wonderful early sequence where Benji strikes seemingly tasteless poses in the shadow of solemn war statues, only for his enthusiasm to infect the remainder of the group as David looks on in bafflement. There are also bits of strangeness, as when Benji compliments David’s feet (“They’re graceful as fuck”), following by David staring at his lower appendages as if trying to discern their appeal. And while the script persistently hints that the cousins’ impending visit to their grandmother’s old home will serve as the film’s poignant finale, when that moment finally arrives it proves to be defiantly anticlimactic.

Does this mean the movie brilliantly subverts audience expectations of familial melodrama, or does it simply fail to deliver true catharsis? I’m not sure. What I am confident of is that Eisenberg maximizes the gifts of his actors. That includes him, of course, but while he allows himself One Big Scene where he gets to emote, he has the humility to play the straight man, letting David’s garden-variety neuroses be overshadowed by Benji’s more visible volatility. It’s the right call, because Culkin is effortlessly magnetic. We know that he can play brash and acerbic, but while those qualities are present here, he spikes them with dashes of anger, self-loathing, and no small amount of tenderness. The quiet tragedy of Benji is that nobody besides his grandmother could ever understand him, and Culkin demonstrates the numbing ache of a character who, despite his best efforts, remains fundamentally adrift.

Does he deserve to be the center of a story whose margins are haunted by the ghosts of millions of his murdered brethren? That’s the kind of vexing question Benji might ask aloud, and which David might suppress in the name of politesse. The trick of A Real Pain is how it gives voice to both of these troubled young men, and how it takes their problems seriously even as it places them in context. They may not carry the weight of the world. But they are not a statistic.

Grade: B