Kieran Culkin is fresh off of winning just about every award he could for the final season of Succession, and justifiably so. Now he's back with a project that seems to be positioning him for some award season noise, this time on the film side.
A Real Pain marks Jesse Eisenberg's second directorial feature, following up the divisive at best When You Finish Saving the World with what I would consider a pretty great sophomore effort. The film follows Eisenberg and Culkin as a pair of cousins, David and Benji, who travel to Poland for a Jewish history trip to honour their late grandmother. Along the way, Benji's troubled recent months and some under the surface tensions between the two begin to boil over.
This is a very solidly made film, but it's really one of those that hinges largely on a strong script and some great acting. You can definitely see shades of Roman Roy in Culkin's performance here, but there are a lot of different layers to him that I think he nailed. This is a character that you grow to learn about the struggles of, but those struggles often surprise do to how energetic and outgoing he is. There are moments his emotions come out full force but you can often see the sadness behind even his more joyful moments. This is a performance that will have you dying of laughter, then sat in discomfort as he spirals, then holding back tears. Surprisingly I also really enjoyed Jesse Eisenberg in this. I don't love him as an actor, while there are roles of his I like he just doesn't always work for me, but his kind of awkwardness works terrifically well here. He is no doubt the quieter of the two despite being the central character, but has moments that he really breaks out and shines.
The supporting cast also surprised me a good deal. I thought the whole movie would basically just be Eisenberg and Culkin, but their tour group features a handful of performances that really flesh out the story. Will Sharpe as James is lovely as their tour guide, offering an outsider perspective as a British man intellectually interested in Poland's history. Jennifer Grey plays Marsha, a recent divorcee who connects with Benji in a beautiful way that makes her reevaluate a lot about her life. There's another couple on the tour but they didn't wow me, whereas Kurt Egyiawan was the biggest standout aside from the two leads. Egyiawan plays Eloge, a man who left Africa in the midst of a genocide and wound up converting to Judaism, finding comfort in it upon moving to the US. I loved this character largely for Egyiawan's quiet charm, but also in how he offers a unique perspective amidst a WWII tour as someone who closely faced something so similar.
These characters all come together really well thanks largely to how Eisenberg's script manages to flesh them out in such a short time. We not only get to see Eisenberg and Culkin work through their tensions and tensions with their family history, but we get to see an assortment of others and how they reflect on Poland's tragic past which I found really powerful. What wowed me the most with this screenplay though was how well Eisenberg balances the seriousness of everything they're seeing on the tour and the struggles Benji is working through, with countless moments of terrific comedy. It makes you care more for the characters while also allowing the film to never drag. Visually it's a perfectly solid film, but it's the writing and acting that really make it work. 4/5
Comments
Post a Comment