Jesse Eisenberg is in front of the camera and behind it. It’s always an interesting time, when actors begin to write and direct their own movies, because now we get to see the stories that appeal to them, and the style of movies they want to make. A small and concise movie from Eisenberg doesn’t surprise me, since he has done a few of them recently, although I haven’t seen many. But, you know, A Real Pain is coming out at the right point in time in Australia, to be recognised as a potential beauty. Let’s watch.
Estranged, but fond, cousins, David (Jesse Eisenberg) and Benji (Kieran Culkin), meet at the airport for a booked trip to Poland, where they will tour regions affecting the Jewish people leading up to and around the Holocaust. The pair were very close when they were young, but while David has settled down with a job and a family, Benji is relatively aimless, but can fire up when he’s around peers, with mood swings that make his train of thought hard to follow. The pair are undertaking this pilgrimage because their grandmother left them money in her will to go see where she grew up. They will both aim to reconnect, but their varying views on the world will have them at odds with each other.
Well, Eisenberg certainly agrees with the common consensus of what works for him 😄 I’m almost surprised by Eisenberg, taking the reins of this movie, and deciding to play such a wet blanket once again, whose neurotic and withdrawn tendencies epitomize his personality. For the most of this movie, David and Benji sort of trade blows, as they both seem to make some mildly agreeable points about the world, and both are annoying. As they go to talk to each other, it’s like their colours bleed into one another but can’t mix; like oil and water, their souls rebound the other’s well-intended testaments. Even by the end of this movie, I really couldn’t answer the question, “just who is the real pain?” 😏 What’s most interesting about their pilgrimage is how they have such little understanding of each other, because they’ve hardly seen one another in months, but are bonded by their time as kids, and the money their grandmother left them in the will. David is trying to get through to Benji, but Benji is nonchalant or resistant to being understood. The story really comes into focus at the group dinner scene, where David unloads on his hangups about his cousin, and how pain seems central to both their lives, while they’ve found different ways to deal with it. Benji is explosive in his emotions, feeling it as they come, but stagnated by them without stimulus. And David has suppressed his pain, to a point where he may not even be aware of his own emotions himself, while he rationalises this as his way of coping with the scope of the world. Both ways are not great, truth be told, and I wonder if this movie is a comment on anti-depressants, and the experience of them as essential to some to move through life. If so, it would show them to be a necessary evil, with David taking a hit from his little orange bottle often in this movie, to get by on a hum; while Benji shows what could be the real result if one was not to take them. I don’t know.
But I do admire that this movie doesn’t feel the need to resolve anything, or for the boys to get to the root of their issues. At the end, they go back to their lives, and any attempts from them to undergo meaningful conversations to help each other fall flat, since they’re both in no position to perceive any real advice. By the end, there’s no indication that this time together, or the amazing trip, has really taught them anything. And I feel that – I get how life can roll on even through events that should be profound. To summarise A Real Pain, I would say that the movie is sweet and probably will be memorable, but it’s uneventful. It’s a third person’s view of this rocky relationship on the surface, and the sight of Poland is offered as an external source of explicit pain and destruction, while we are never privy to that of our two subjects. But I’m glad I saw it, with Eisenberg’s writing seemingly exploring an irritating pressure point … I like the scene with the stones left on grandma’s old door mat, symbolic of how the two boys mean to come together for to a unifying and meaningful momentum, but are blocked by the realities of mitigating factors.
And I’m not an expert on all things media, but it seems Kieran Culkin’s career has been given a boost through Succession 👍 Due to a recent interview I saw, I perceive Culkin to be a casual charismatic guy, where much of what we see in this role could come naturally; while Culkin still has to spring for those higher-energy moments, and those depressive swings, that make Benji always a prominent and outwardly complex figure. Benji is eye-catching in being unstable – he can’t stand the first class train trip because the tour should be sad, yet he was making a party out of the Polish war statue the day before. And then, later on, he’s perfectly fine with the first class journey since he has controlled the context 🤨 If Succession and A Real Pain are to lead to more movie roles for old Igby, and provide more Pepsi for Fuller, then I’m excited to see more.
3.5
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