Cillian Howley takes us through the delicately handled dramedy A Real Pain, Jesse Eisenberg’s latest film about our relationship to suffering
Writer-director and actor Jesse Eisenberg takes Kieran Culkin on an ancestral trip to Poland in the comedy-drama A Real Pain (2025). David (Eisenberg) and Benji (Culkin) were once close cousins whose different life choices have pushed them apart. Following the death of their Holocaust survivor grandmother, the pair reunite for a ‘‘geriatric Polish tour.’’ They set out to visit her birthplace with a group of older Jewish Americans and an English tour guide named James (Will Sharpe).
The film’s opening moments emphasize the pair’s conflicting personalities. As Benji waits calmly in the airport on the morning of their flight to Warsaw, David rushes to the airport amid frantic, unsuccessful calls to his idling cousin. Benji is relaxed but directionless in life. Meanwhile, David is a highly strung ball of anxiety. He is constantly preoccupied with the wellbeing of his family back home and his cousin on the trip.
David has a wife, a young son, and a steady job selling digital advertisements. Benji, who has very little going on in his life, is quick in expressing his disdain for online ads, paying no heed to his cousin’s feelings. David protests they are the ‘‘lifeblood of the internet.” Benji's unfiltered and unabashed emotion is the foil to David, who overly concerns himself with logic, rationality, and politeness.
On issues, large and small, the cousins clash. Against his cousin’s wishes, Benji goes on an impassioned rant against sitting in the first-class carriage of a train as Jewish tourists in Poland. He finds it insensitive as their ancestors would have been forced to ride at the back of the train eighty years ago. After moving carriages following his outburst, Benji allows David to oversleep and the pair miss their stop. David is in disbelief, shocked by Benji’s ‘‘f**ked up sense of priorities.’’
The other tourists warm to Benji despite his emotional outbursts. David is bewildered when Benji and the group play pretend soldiers at a World War II monument. David refuses to join and is left capturing the moment on five different phones. Their roleplaying, although immature, proves a bonding experience for the group. The recently divorced Marcia Kramer (Jennifer Grey) is particularly fond of Benji. David is surprised at his cousin’s immediate connection with her. Benji plainly states the ‘‘deep sadness behind her eyes’’ as his motivation for talking to her. Upon David’s suggestion he was too forward and should leave her be, Benji astutely remarks "nobody wants to be alone."
The emotional intelligence of Benji, yet inability to self-regulate, is consistent throughout the film. For example, while in a Jewish graveyard, Benji berates the guide, James, for spewing historical factoids in a sacred place of memorial. It further adds to an exploration of Benji’s emotional struggle following his grandmother’s death several months prior.
The tour culminates in a visit to their grandmother’s one-time home outside Lublin. David and Benji place rocks on the stoop in her honour. The touching moment is cut short by an older man who insists they remove the rocks for safety reasons. Following a dissatisfying but unifying climax, the cousins share a joint on their final night.
Eisenberg plays, yet again, the socially awkward dork in A Real Pain. Perhaps, writing a role to your acting strengths deserves some credit. Quentin Tarantino has never slid right into a character he wrote himself. Still, David is no Mark Zuckerberg and is no chore to watch. His rigid mannerisms perfectly oppose the loose ways of Benji, naturally inhabited by Culkin. Benji is a balancing act, quite like the film itself, between moments of sincere poignancy and undeniable comedy. Culkin makes it believable that such a brash, blunt guy could be so likable and charming.
This is a filmmaking accomplishment from actor-turned-director Eisenberg, proving his reliability behind the camera. The bleak backdrop is cleverly injected into the film. Pain and humour coexist without levity. The delicately handled topics of antisemitism and mental health struggles do not weigh down the film. On paper, A Real Pain is meandering and uneventful but on the big screen, there is truly not a dull moment.