It’s part comedy, part tragedy. It’s part road-trip saga, part odd couple-buddy flick, and part Holocaust film. What could possibly have gone wrong? Yup – everything could have gone wrong.
So the first miracle about “A Real Pain,” writer-director Jesse Eisenberg’s remarkably accomplished film about mismatched cousins on a somber trip through Poland, is how it pulls off the most delicate of balancing acts. That it does so while also asking intriguing questions about the nature of pain – personal vs. universal, historic vs.
contemporary – is all the more impressive. So is the fact that it showcases an Oscar-worthy performance. That stunning performance comes from Kieran Culkin, and what’s striking is that it doesn’t overpower the rest of the ensemble.
That’s a testament mostly to the careful way Eisenberg, who co-stars in the less flashy role, has constructed and paced his film. And as for Culkin, well, if you needed proof that his searing, Emmy-winning work as tortured live-wire Roman Roy in “Succession” wasn’t a fluke, here you have it. The movie, which is only Eisenberg’s second directorial effort , stems from a trip the “Social Network” star took some 20 years ago to Poland.
There, he found the tiny house his aunt had lived in before the Holocaust uprooted the family. He wondered what his own life would have been like had World War II never happened. And that’s one of the many conversations that David (Eisenberg) and Benji (Culkin) have a.
