“Look at what happened to our families, look at where we came from. I mean, who isn’t — you know, who isn’t wrought?”

David Kaplan

Jesse Eisenberg’s second directorial outing is a low-key exploration of grief and family through two cousins on a Holocaust tour of Poland to honour their recently deceased grandmother. Eisenberg’s background in writing for the stage is evident from the dialogue-heavy approach to character exploration, and he has an ear for naturalistic language as people talk in tangents that reinforce meaning on an emotional level. Inspired by Eisenberg’s own family and a trip that he took with his wife, ending at the same house, the conversations occur against a series of beautiful Polish vistas — for a small budget film the constantly shifting location shoot must have been perilous. Eisenberg’s David is his familiar brand of conflict-averse neuroses, lending A Real Pain the familiar air of a Woody Allen movie, particularly as most of the characters are American tourists despite the setting. Kieran Culkin also plays to type as the charming and antagonistic Benji, but there is more nuance to his damaged character, grieving more than just the loss of his grandmother. Culkin’s performance is deserving of the recognition it has received, and together these characters present a contrast between feeling and suppression. There is no artificial catharsis shoehorned into the 89-minute runtime, instead focusing on the attempt (and often the inability) to connect — both with history and with other people. Through his script, Eisenberg expresses self-awareness that his own pain may be unexceptional, even banal, yet the intensity with which we experience it is entirely personal.

8/10