Jesse Eisenberg and Kieran Culkin Deliver a Moving and Generous Performance in “A Real Pain”

Many people know someone like the character plays in A Real Pain, the story of two cousins who journey to Poland to explore their Jewish heritage and the past of their recently deceased grandmother. Culkin portrays Benji Kaplan, a likable, easygoing fellow who appears carefree and relaxed, the kind of guy who casually brings a brick of marijuana to his hotel; upon check-in, he picks it up as if it were nothing. His cousin David—played by Jesse Eisenberg, who also wrote and directed the film—lives in New York with his wife and young son; he diligently works in digital advertising without complaint. They used to be incredibly close, but have drifted apart. David, uptight and dutiful, lives the life of a responsible adult. Benji resides in Binghamton and, it’s hinted, hasn’t held a job in years. Yet, somehow he makes ends meet—his gregarious charm helps. He’s the type who’ll take over the piano at a sleepy lounge bar and have the whole group singing along in a flash.

However, anyone paying close attention can see that Benji feels things intensely—his emotions are so raw they practically vibrate beneath his skin. He both infuriates and endears himself to those who care about him, and perhaps no one cares for him more than David. A Real Pain is a road-trip comedy, a perceptive study of the chaotic bonds that hold families together, and a reflection on how events we didn’t even live through ourselves can still leave their mark forever. It’s also simply a movie about the profound, untouchable sadness in some people, the kind of film no one could teach you how to make. Somehow, it emerged from Eisenberg’s heart and quietly impressive mind, and the result is near-miraculous.

A Real Pain starts out as a comical ramble. David and Benji are traveling from their respective homes to meet at the airport. Anxious and obsessive, David leaves one voice message after another for Benji, clearly worried his cousin won’t show up on time. When David arrives at the airport, Benji is already there, having arrived hours earlier—he enjoys hanging out in airports, chatting with random people. Benji isn’t predictably unreliable; he’s unreliably unreliable, meaning that sometimes you can trust him to show up and sometimes you can’t.

Once in Poland, David and Benji will join a tour group—it’s led by an extremely knowledgeable but perhaps overly talkative guide () and includes a recent divorcee seeking to reconnect not just with her past but with a self she seems to have lost (Jennifer Grey), an older couple who are doing the kind of serious traveling that older couples often do (Liza Sadovy and Daniel Oreskes), and, perhaps most moving of all, a man who escaped the Rwandan genocide and has since converted to Judaism (Kurt Egyiawan.) The tour will begin in the charming town of Lublin. But the group will also visit Majdanek Concentration Camp, and that, for obvious reasons, will be the most difficult day. David and Benji’s grandmother had somehow survived internment in that camp, later emigrating to the United States. David misses his grandmother, but it becomes clear that her death nearly shattered Benji. She was his favorite person in the world and, possibly, the only thing keeping him grounded.

There’s a lot of ramshackle in A Real Pain: Eisenberg and Culkin are wonderful together—they banter and tumble like kittens playing with a ball. The movie is so entertaining that you barely notice the melancholic shadow that begins to creep over it; that’s when you realize you’re in the hands of an expert but decidedly unassuming filmmaker. This is Eisenberg’s second film—his first was 2022’s heartfelt but uneven . He’s also a playwright (The Revisionist, The Spoils), and he’s published a book of stories, Bream Gives Me Hiccups. Sometimes, people who try their hand at too many things do few of them well. But Eisenberg, it seems, has so many ideas—so much intellectual exuberance—that he just can’t stop himself. And if you come up with just one film like A Real Pain, you’re clearly doing something right.

What’s most wonderful about the movie is its radiant generosity. Eisenberg’s performance is terrific, muted and hyperkinetic in all the right ways. But most often, he’s subtly directing attention to his co-star. Culkin is extraordinary. His Benji is full of energy, often blurting out the wrong thing that somehow, mysteriously, ends up being the right thing. “Davers and I are cousins!” he announces brightly to the other members of the tour group during their first meeting, and we can feel Dave’s conflicted discomfort. Sometimes he winces at Benji’s crazed buoyancy, especially when his cousin uses it as a kind of weapon: “You used to feel everything, man,” Benji tells him, a comment that comes with a twinge of passive-aggressiveness. But he’s also kind of right. Dave has forgotten the joy of spontaneity; Benji brings it back.

But Culkin also shows us that Benji is spinning through the world as if to shake off the unnamable sorrow deep within. Some people feel too much, while others don’t feel enough. How can we balance out that inequity? How do we treat those who bear the heaviest load with kindness? A Real Pain suggests that it’s not as easy as it looks. But it’s the least, and the most, we can do.