23/31
Mismatched cousins reunite for a trip across Poland to honor their beloved grandmother, but their old tensions resurface in the context of their family history. When Benji and David visit their grandmother’s home in Poland, it turns out to be where Jesse Eisenberg lives. The real-life ancestors settled in the diaspora. Benji Kaplan: We keep moving, we stay light, we stay nimble. We’re going to the bathroom. David Kaplan: Bathroom. Benji Kaplan: He gets to the back of the train and starts heading to the front looking for stragglers. David Kaplan: Excuse me, are we the stragglers? Benji Kaplan: Yeah. By the time he gets to the front, the train will be in the station and we’ll be home free. David Kaplan: That’s so stupid. The tickets probably cost about twelve dollars. Benji Kaplan: That’s the principle of it. We shouldn’t have to pay for train tickets in Poland. This is our country. David Kaplan: No, it’s not, it was our country. They kicked us out because they thought we were cheap. Featured on CBS News Sunday Morning: Episode #46.44 (2024). 12 Etudes, Op. 25, No. 3 in F major Written by Frederic Chopin Performed by Tzvi Erez. Jesse Eisenberg’s sophomore effort as a writer-director aims to be something unconventional. There’s something of Richard Linklater’s BEFORE trilogy in the DNA of A REAL PAIN, with some recognizable heritage from Michael Winterbottom’s TRIP series also apparent. The loping pace, the languid cinematography that asks you to look beyond the surface of the sights, the dialogue that meanders through an unpretentious, unstructured revelation of the meaning of life, the total absence of any “bad guys,” the near-total absence of any immediate conflict, the slightest hint of any goal driving the plot beyond the completion of a simple itinerary… A Real Pain shares all of these realistic traits with those earlier, more spirited, life-affirming films. Yet somehow… it doesn’t quite work. I’m not sure what the problem was and why I never got into this movie. I think a big part of it has to do with all the supporting characters (that is, everyone except the cousins played by Eisenberg and Kieran Culkin). Will Sharpe’s non-Jewish tour guide, the Rwandan convert, the old couple, the sexy divorcee… the characters are all very basic, very conventional, very boring. The actors who play them are good, but they don’t have much to do, and so they feel unnatural and lifeless, more like set decorations than people. Eisenberg knows how to direct a camera, I think; he knows how to put the right cinematic elements in place. But maybe he doesn’t know how to direct actors, or maybe he just doesn’t know how to write characters. There’s never anything to suggest that these people exist beyond the moments we see them, which perhaps could have been fixed with some more spontaneous improvisation from the actors. Eisenberg and especially Culkin are better in this regard, but there’s still something rather muted and “scripted” about much of what they say and do. The “workaholic salesman with OCD” is largely one-dimensional, and the few times his character expands beyond this façade feel more like forced acting than any kind of genuine glimpse of something deeper. Culkin is wonderful—perhaps a glimpse of his Succession character if Roman Roy actually cared about people—but I think that’s just a credit to Culkin’s talent; somehow he manages to transcend what he’s been given to work with. This is a decent indie film, with a few good laughs, some interesting ideas, a memorable trip through Poland, and a solid performance from Culkin.