23/26
Misfit cousins gather on a road trip through Poland to honor their beloved grandmother, but their old tensions surface against the backdrop of their family history. When Benji and David visit his grandmother’s house in Poland, Jesse Eisenberg’s 39-year-old ancestors are settled in the diaspora. Benji Kaplan: We keep moving, we stay light, we stay agile. David Kaplan: Yeah. Benji Kaplan: The conductor comes through, takes our tickets, we tell him we’re going to the bathroom. David Kaplan: Bathroom. Benji Kaplan: He’s coming for the train, he’s on his way. ahead, looking for wreckers. David Kaplan: Excuse me, are we hikers? Benji Kaplan: Yeah. When he gets in front, the train is in the station and we’re free to go home. David Kaplan: That’s so fucking stupid. Tickets are probably like twelve dollars. Benji Kaplan: That’s the principle of it. We shouldn’t have to pay for train tickets in Poland. That’s our country. David Kaplan: No, it’s not, that was our country. They kicked us out because they thought we were cheap. Featured on CBS News Sunday Morning Episode No. 46.44 (2024). 12 Etudes, Op. 25, No. 3 in F MajorWritten by Frederic ChopinPerformed by Tzvi Erez. Jesse Eisenberg’s second work as a writer-director is something of an outlier. A REAL PAIN has something of Richard Linklater’s BEFORE trilogy in its DNA, and the recognizable legacy of Michael Winterbottom’s TRIP series is also evident. The meandering pacing, the dull cinematography that begs to peer beneath the surface of tourist attractions, the dialogue that weaves through a modest and unstructured unraveling of the meaning of life, the complete absence of any “bad” whatsoever. the almost complete absence of any direct conflict, the slightest hint of a purpose that drives the plot beyond the simple completion of a journey… A Real Pain shares all of these realistic traits with earlier, more spiritual, life-affirming films. Yet somehow… it doesn’t quite work. I don’t know why I never got into this film. I think a lot of it has to do with all the supporting characters (that is, everyone except the cousins played by Eisenberg and Kieran Culkin). Will Sharp’s non-Jewish tour guide, the Rwandan convert, the old couple, the hot divorcee… the characters are all very simple, very conventional, very boring. The actors who play them are great, but they don’t have much to do, so they seem unnatural and lifeless, more embellished than human. I think Eisenberg knows how to operate a camera; he knows how to put in the right cinematic elements. But maybe he doesn’t know how to direct actors, or maybe he just doesn’t know how to write characters. There’s no indication that these people exist outside of the moments we see them, which could have been fixed by the actors’ spontaneous improvisations. Eisenberg and Culkin in particular are better at this, but there’s still something rather crude and “scripted”; much of what they say and do is off-putting. Eisenberg’s “workaholic salesman with OCD” is mostly one-dimensional, and the few times his character expands beyond that facade, it feels more like forced acting than a real glimpse into something deeper. Culkin is nice – perhaps a glimpse into his sequel character if Roman Roy really cared about people, but I think that’s just because of Culkin’s talent; he somehow manages to go beyond what he’s given to work with. This is a decent indie film with some good laughs, a couple of interesting ideas, a memorable tour of Poland, and a solid performance from Culkin.
