Two Jewish cousins go on a Holocaust Holiday? No end of things could go wrong with that as an idea. The marvel of A Real Pain is that writer/director/producer/star Jesse Eisenberg doesn’t just sidestep potential disaster, but hands the film to another actor, Kieran Culkin, while doing so.
It’s Before Sunrise in structure, but instead of pretty, young Ethan Hawke and Julie Delpy hashing things out over a night of escalating romantic potential, it’s Americans Benji and David in Poland, off on a pilgrimage to see where their Polish grandma Doris once lived, talking the entire time, assessing themselves as people, as Jews in a country where their kind haven’t always fared so well, and as cousins who couldn’t be more different.
Having met at the airport, where their characters are instantly established, Tiggerish Benji and Eeyore-like David jet off to Warsaw. There they join a small group – Marcia (Jennifer Grey), a wealthy New Yorker worried about her privilege; Mark (Daniel Oreskes) and Diane (Liza Sadovy), a “boring” (her words) retired couple; and Eloge (Kurt Egyiawan), a survivor of the Rwandan Holocaust who converted to Judaism not long afterwards. Different types of Jews, but all of them drawn by a desire to explore European Jewry in a country where it thrived. But also, if they’re being honest, by the dark lure of the death camps. As are Benji and David, if they’re being honest, which they’re not. Plus James (Will Sharpe), their slightly bumptious and eager tour guide, full of facts, even when facts get in the way of feelings.
It seems obvious that it’s Eisenberg playing neurasthenic, withdrawn worrier David, and Culkin as Benji, outgoing, charming but with a mood that can turn with the breeze, but originally Eisenberg had written Benji for himself.
His decision to switch the parts about makes total sense. Culkin is playing a version of Roman Roy, his character in Succession – voluble, bouncy, flaky, a stoner given to moments of massive self-doubt – and he’s remarkable, his performance changing the energy of the film when he’s on the screen, much as livewire Benji changes the group dynamic as it moves from a Warsaw hotel to the Jewish quarter and the cemetery in the city of Lubin, to the Majdanek concentration camp.
Eventually David and Benji leave the group behind to undertake a personal mini-excursion to their grandma Dory’s house – shot at the house where Eisenberg’s own forebears once lived – for a downbeat finale that is better in retrospect than at first glance. Eisenberg has resisted the urge to milk it, and it seems all the better for it.
Benji’s borderline-demented personality to one side, it’s a fairly low key drama – lots of Chopin piano on the soundtrack and images courtesy of director of photography Michał Dymek, who did EO for Jerzy Skolimowski and The Girl with the Needle for Magnus von Horn. He’s also low key. Here, in these borderline-drab places, terrible things happened, no more need be said.
The “real pain” is what happened historically, compared to which painfully buzzy Benji and painfully controlling David don’t register historically at all. That’s the film’s arc and its message – the guys’ realisation that they need to get over themselves.
Remarkably, considering how much potential there is here for things to go wrong, Eisenberg gets it all right. This is a thoughtful, tender portrait of two American men set against a dark historical background. It’s even funny here and there, and not mawkishly, something so many films about the Holocaust struggle to pull off. Because…? It’s honest.
A Real Pain – Watch it/buy it at Amazon
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© Steve Morrissey 2025
