With all the aggressions and struggles suffered by someone different than us, it is only normal for one to assume that we are mere spectators. Such an argument shouldn’t be viewed as a criticism of the importance of compassion or empathy for a person. At most, there’s an increasingly invisible nexus between them that helps explain why such envy exists. Actually, the mistake of it all would be to be too sympathetic to her or to someone who is too sympathetic to her feelings. Looking at someone, supporting them, and crying with them are, in this regard, rather enabling of and caring of different things but even when people show their different feelings, it is historical. This kind of reality is so relatable and familiar to Jesse Eisenberg’s The Real Pain in this depiction of two cousins who travel to a place dominantly seen to merely hold pain and are waging wars within themselves while never having fought one. Actually, it’s more of the opposite story of these two siblings who have been brought up very differently, one a researcher of a political cult and the second a political cult member.
Kieran Culkin and Eisenberg’s characters, Benji and David respectively, are on a mission to seek the origins of David’s wife’s grandmother while also trying to comprehend the repercussions of the Holocaust in Poland. But in reality, Benji is just a grieving ‘BFF’ who has lost his beloved grandmother and is navigating his way to acceptance. They, along with ‘sexy James’ (Will Sharpe) and four other tourists, Jennifer Gray, Kurt Egiywan, Liza Sadovy & Daniel Oreskes, are on the other extreme of the family spectrum and assume themselves to be the cousins. As a result, all of them falsely believe that they never lived in Poland and after the tour ends they will carry on with their mundane lives. Perhaps one of the best aspects of the movies that Eisenberg wrote is that they do not have any character that is included purely to help for tension with the aid of their emotions, like the other participants in the tour. Benji and David could have easily turned this movie into a mundane show and made every tour member a problem that they needed to deal with.
But that’s not valid, even though they seem to be at the margins since they are a part of the environment of the piece.
Very few people will notice it, as they will probably be glued to the screen, but what the Emmy-winning Culkin does to this film. He acted out, in my opinion, the best character of 2024, a character that we all know (or even we ourselves were that character at some point) the character that you love to hate, a friend, or a family member who is the worst but one whom you would give anything to be. So pure, so naked, in a way that draws in the audience, Culkin’s character is Benji in such a haphazard manner that the imagination of the planner is never ever given the opportunity to even for one fleeting moment entertain the thought. Helper of Benji’s character Waddington and Kuklin creates and Waddington is astonishing to see how he transfers to this role with such rapidity. He spent hours in Succession to devise how he would take on this character and made use of all the options that he had within him. He solves the enigma of how to make a woman’s shoulders, voice, and eyes with the myriad of words that never sound but reside in the shattered man by the name of Benji.
In the film “A Real Pain,” both of these components are expertly combined to make the suffering experienced by Benji’s character both visceral and realistic. In fact, the film’s writer and director, Jesse Eisenberg, does not like the character at all. He’s just an annoying son of a gun. Nevertheless, it is quite understandable why he would get upset when it comes to getting on a train to a concentration camp and else shout at James who tends to throw figures around as if geo-political aspects are more important than actually being in the locations. And this is only the starting point of his great views which follow up to A Real Pain and capture his life in a world that isn’t in any way easy. After the first one, if anyone insults someone so friendly and intelligent as James then one can easily understand how Benji would become. Benji is not that when he decides not to restrain himself at all.
What exactly makes it such an enigma? To put it in such a way that we do not provoke anger in those who care to listen is perhaps the most tragic of all because it ranks as one of the most painful things to do in life.
It may be Kieran Culkin’s portrayal in this particular movie that is most likely to walk away with the praise but all that Jesse Eisenberg has accomplished in his capacity as a writer and director deserves in equal measure to be praised.
Some music is also included and a good instance of this is when he takes his score off the mix because the scene changes to a concentration camp where music is not required because there is plenty that can be said without the aid of music. He requires just 90 minutes which is quite stingy but also very pleasing to pack in the film d plot which has been crafted very well. He paints Poland in a more appropriate respect and avoids the American way of filmmaking which spoils such a movie more often than not. Whenever A Real Pain gets close to being kitsch, or too sentimental to pass as a serious film, he balances it out with his selections.
And that whenever there seems to be a discrepancy, organic linkage fails to take place, and wherever organic linkage fails to take place. But in the end, it is only about two lovers who have caused pain to themselves by separating and for no particular reason who have caused pain to themselves by separating. But there exists love. Love that is evident in every single shot. He’s left his wife and child at home but David knows that Benji is always the first to the door in new places, he has a nurturing instinct, but will someday be lonely. It has been 90 minutes in total, and by the end, we start to accept David and Benji are family, cousins, or younger siblings to us. It is not even close to feasible to feel and see their emotions, and still, we, in our absence, are part of their environment. In most cases, describing art as the barest form of life is a tough nut to crack, more so, if the art makes it clear that pain is as crucial as everything in life, it is more difficult to make sense of it all.
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