A Real Pain Movie Review and Movie Summary (2024)

We're all just tourists when it comes to someone else's pain. This should not be seen as a detraction from the importance of compassion and empathy. On the contrary, they seem more important today than ever. But there are limits to how much we can truly put ourselves in someone else's shoes. Being a witness, being an ally, just being a shoulder to cry on – these are the things that connect us and make us human, but everyone has a different emotional language based on years of experience that we come up with absorb the blows of the world but can never fully speak. This truth is at the heart of Jesse Eisenberg's masterful “A Real Pain,” a story about two cousins ​​who travel to a place where unspeakable pain has been inflicted on the people while battling their own personal demons. On the surface, it's an oil-and-water story about two men who are practically brothers but have led remarkably different lives – one is a bubbling well of emotion, the other goes through more traditional life patterns. Both men want to be like the other. Eisenberg's film movingly and brilliantly understands why they can't.

David (Eisenberg) and Benji (Kieran Culkin) have booked a trip to Poland to learn how the Holocaust affected the region by visiting their grandmother's hometown. Grandma, a survivor herself, recently passed away, leaving her best friend Benji in one of those emotional chapters we all face at different points in our lives. The cousins, so close in age that they are practically brothers, join a traveling group led by the engaging James (Will Sharpe), which also includes four other travelers played by Jennifer Grey, Kurt Egiywan, Liza Sadovy and Daniel Oreskes. Everyone here feels like they have lived in Poland before arriving and will return to their lives once the tour is over. One of the many wonderful things about Eisenberg's excellent script is that he refuses to use the other tourists as emotional pawns. There is a much worse version of this film that creates problems for each tour member that Benji or David have to solve. And yet they are not just background information – they reinforce the overall truthfulness of the piece.

Most people won't notice because they're so fascinated, but what Emmy winner Culkin does in this film. In what is easily one of the best performances of 2024, he plays a man we all know (or have been at some point in our lives): the friend or relative we can't stand under certain circumstances and yet secretly like better in his worst form. Culkin is so raw and organic, drawing Benji in a way that never feels calculated. Despite watching him for hours on Succession, he disappears into this role almost immediately and we believe every decision he makes. He finds a way to convey an inner monologue that Benji may not even fully understand, but that comes through through his eyes, his body language, and his tone.

What really makes “A Real Pain” stand out is that Eisenberg, the writer/director, never feels sorry for Benji, but he doesn’t put him on a pedestal either. He's a pain in the ass. But he's not exactly wrong when he has an emotional outburst over the inconvenience of taking the train to a concentration camp, or attacks James for spewing facts rather than actually engaging with the locals in the towns they visit to establish connection. This scene is truly a standout, a moment that encapsulates the complexity of Benji's emotionally raw existence. No one has ever criticized the obviously likeable and informed James before, which makes it easy to see Benji as a troublemaker, but he's just being honest about his emotional reaction to what's around him. Where is the error? Why are so few of us willing to express these difficult feelings? Isn't burying them the real cause of the pain?

Culkin's performance will be the touchstone for this film's adoration, but Eisenberg's work as a director and writer should not be overlooked. He uses the music beautifully and delicately, memorably allowing his score to disappear from the mix as the tour takes place in a concentration camp, a place where the silence says so much more. He shapes the relatively small story of his film perfectly and reduces it to a 90-minute production that has nothing greasy but still feels completely complete. He photographs Poland with respect and admiration, never succumbing to the travelogue approach of traveling Americans that can derail a film like this. Every time “A Real Pain” threatens to become maudlin or sentimental, it is justified by Eisenberg’s choices.

And that grounding is what makes it so powerful. Ultimately it's about two people who grew apart because their lives took such different directions. But they still love each other. You can feel that in every picture. David has a wife and child that he misses back home, but he worries that Benji will be lonely again, even though he is the first person to make friends in a new place, someone who genuinely cares about the stories interested in other people and concerned with them. In just 90 minutes we get to know David and Benji as if they were our own friends or cousins. Even if we can't fully feel their emotions, we see elements of our own in them. It's a powerful feeling to see art that reminds us that all aspects of our existence are valuable, especially our pain.