A Monumental Ode To Beauty
Some films swim harder than others. Jesse Eisenberg’s A Real Pain (Having just been nominated for Best Original Screenplay and Best Supporting Actor Oscars) is a calm watered masterpiece with all the waves underneath whilst remaining flat and still up top. The humor and emotional depth are never in question as it focuses on telling a tender story of two Jewish American cousins reconnecting on a Holocaust tour group in Poland. David (Jesse Eisenberg) is reserved and polite but nervous and twitchy. Benji (Kieran Culkin) is a free-spirited and outspoken drifter with a huge personality who spellbounds everyone he meets.
This is not a film that lets go of your hand but gently allows the audience to roam free amongst the tour which audiences will most definitely feel they are part of. At just 90 minutes, A Real Pain never drags but never goes by too quickly. You learn about these people as though you’re truly meeting them and getting to know them. Eisenberg’s directorial and creative focus is prevalent all the way through. He has a natural shyness that is most effective in moments of revelation when it becomes natural for people to break.
I simply cannot deny, this is Culkin’s film. It’s a lovable, unapologetic, vulnerable electricity volt of a person. The film begins six months after a devastating incident that doesn’t come as a surprise when it’s revealed but also not too on the nose. Will Sharp, Kurt Egyiawan, and Jennifer Grey are beautifully understated as the tour guides and only lone travelers. Each has their reasons for the tour and the legacy of the Holocaust stands so tall amongst the delicately balanced acts between A Real Pain’s genres of comedy and drama, never even AT RISK of becoming exploitative. It reminded me of Diane Lane’s “Paris Can Wait” and Juliette Binoche’s “Certified Copy”, other European road films about people being set free through the beauty of getting away and birthing their intimacies amongst strangers.
Culkin is the front-runner for Best Supporting Actor for the 97th Academy Awards and I DO think he’ll win. Every performance in the category this year is of a person who is so crushed and buried underneath the massive weight of who the world around them expects to be as men. Two of them crack under the pressure and surrender to evil, using it to destroy other people. Three of them are genuinely good people who are there in moments of comfort where they’re needed most. I hope you will see 5 nominated films and decide for yourself.
Of course, it helps that audiences have become so emotionally invested in Culkin’s childlike lovability through his hilarious, beautiful, and soul-crushing work as Sucession’s Roman Roy. They’re practically the same characters in different lives, using humor and zest to avoid the cracks that continue to make the glass walls of their entrapments more fragile.
Benji at least wants to venture into the uncomfortable and cannot bring himself to remain seated in first class on a train as they get closer to a concentration camp. It’s one of the few moments in A Real Pain that feels like it may jump off the cliffs of the unconventional yet gentle grounds it resides on.
He insists he’s fine even when it's clear he’s ready to break down. The atmospheric tone often changes leaving audiences uncertain of how to verbalize the vastness of emotions. Culkin has always provoked this. I remember seeing him laugh in Succession after a disastrous interview scene provoking Brian Cox’s Logan to scream and smack him so hard, he spits his bleeding tooth in his hand. “I’m fine,” he insisted. He channels that same hopeless display of untruthful words here because it’s too much out of habit. As time keeps moving forward, the modern world tries to promote that it IS ok not to be beaten down by the traumas and uncertainties of life the world around us keeps contradicting those very beliefs which have not modernized no matter how much we think otherwise.
A Real Pain ends right where it started but in a state of mind that while not much different from where it was before, is relieved to have had this experience. I trust audiences will feel the same way. A Real Pain is a monumental ode to beauty executed in such simplicity as a warm tight embrace to life’s artistic free spirits who still feel unready to unburden themselves of their pain. A Real Pain was also made under Emma Stone’s company Fruit Tree. With the Oscars less than a month away, she continues to shadow her producing genius and love of powerful and creative stories that can only be brought to life through the art of collaboration. There’s no breaking down of that mesmerizing feeling you will feel right at the end shot. That’s what A Real Pain and this year’s cinema has done. As the final line of The Brutalist goes, (This year's Best Picture front runner) “No matter what the others try and sell you, it is the destination, not the journey.”
Script Slug. (2025, January 1). A Real Pain (2024) - Script Slug. https://www.scriptslug.com/script/a-real-pain-2024
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