Everyone has someone in their life they oscillate wildly back and forth on whether they love or hate them. That person's their complete opposite, but someone they're inextricably connected to because, in some perverse way, they complete one another. The strengths of one are the weaknesses of the other and vice versa — and they'll be there for each other no matter what.
In A Real Pain, cousins David and Benji Kaplan (Jesse Eisenberg and Kieran Culkin, respectively) grew up as close as brothers and fit this archetype to a T. In the wake of their grandmother's death, they travel to Poland, the old country, to see where she grew up and experience the culture she left behind after surviving the Holocaust.
David is exactly the kind of character most people picture when thinking of Jesse Eisenberg. He's anxious. He leaves too many voicemails. When given the chance to partake in a spontaneous moment of fun, he's the guy reluctantly taking photos for everyone else. Benji, in contrast, is a being of nearly pure id. He says exactly what he thinks and feels at all times, and he feels all of his feelings deeply. He walks into a room and lights it up, like when he convinces the group to strike a pose at a war monument in a moment of spontaneous fun. But when the room is a china shop, he's the proverbial bull.
In Poland, they join a Jewish tour group with a retired couple, Mark and Diane (Daniel Oreskes and Liza Sadovy, respectively), a recently divorced woman called Marcia (Jennifer Grey), and a convert from Rwanda, Eloge (Kurt Egyiawan). Their tour guide, James (Will Sharpe), isn't Jewish himself but is fascinated by the Jewish experience. He takes them to several important but touristy sites and lists facts for them, providing different venues for the cousins to confront both their immediate grief and their ingrained generational trauma.
Each member of the ensemble brings a memorable performance to their well-drawn characters. Sharpe stands out among them as the perhaps meek but sensitive and intelligent James, who deals with the brunt of one of Benji's outbursts.
Eisenberg and Culkin have exactly the right chemistry for this mismatched pair. All of the little idiosyncrasies that come with a lifelong friend exist in their interactions, the familiarity and the button pushing. They love and frustrate each other in equal measure because of the ways they've drifted apart, both emotionally and physically (David lives in New York and Benji remains in their hometown). Somewhere along the way, David did what many people view as growing up: he starts repressing his feelings for the convenience of those around him, while Benji feels everything so acutely that he's never been able to move into this part of adulthood.
David may be prototypically Jesse Eisenbergian, but as writer, director and star of the film, Eisenberg creates something special with this character. His performance has a depth that we haven't seen from him in some time, nailing the nervous body language that he's known for, as well as the cracks in the facade. Clearly, David feels a great deal for both his deceased grandmother and his troubled cousin, and coupled with the level of stress that a trip brings on, he can only hold everything inside for so long.
Eisenberg's ticks and speech patterns feel incredibly authentic, and when time comes for him to have a big emotional moment, it's one of the most relatable scenes in the movie. As he confesses all he's feeling to the group, he launches into the type of monologue that an introvert sometimes has to deliver — one that feels like a dam bursting inside and he's powerless to stop the flood. It's an affecting part of the film that highlights his voice not only as an actor but as a writer and director as well.
His script is incredibly honest, and as director, Eisenberg's not afraid to hold the camera and let a scene play out when required. Eisenberg makes some really effective visual choices, and I'm excited for him to see what he does next behind the camera.
The real revelation, though, is Kieran Culkin. Benji could easily have been a trope, the family fuck up who says and does the wrong things simply because he's a thoughtless idiot. The script is too smart for that and Culkin delivers a raw, organic and deeply felt turn as Benji, a career-best performance. Viewers never know Benji's next move, not only scene to scene but line to line, and it never feels forced, artificial or staged.
It becomes clear throughout the course of the movie that Benji's perhaps more than a little bit broken. By the time the two cousins have their big emotional talk, much has already been communicated in the little moments between them: even if they only speak every few months, because they're always there for each other, things will eventually be alright — it's okay to be not okay.
Eisenberg has worked with (and learned from) some great directors, and he's developed his own voice in the process with a knack for conjuring excellent performances from his fellow actors. A Real Pain is a smart, funny, relatable story about two men connecting and clashing over their shared and individual traumas, that's brave enough to understand that life doesn't always tie up in a nice bow.