sundance festival review A REAL PAIN

[samhexum]

SEEMS WORTH SEEING:

Kieran Culkin is amazing in ‘A Real Pain’ at Sundance

Johnny Oleksinski https://nypost.com/2024/01/20/entertainment/kieran-culkin-is-amazing-in-a-real-pain-at-sundance/

Making Jesse Eisenberg and Kieran Culkin the leads of a heartwarming movie about family bonds (the non-back-stabbing kind) and self-discovery would seem counter-intuitive.

Culkin has just finished up playing Roman Roy, the cutthroat, foul-mouthed media scion on HBO’s “Succession.” And Eisenberg, even though he’s had a long and varied career, is still best known for his role as subzero Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg in 2011’s “The Social Network.”

Maybe, you think, these guys would be better off portraying a duo of quirky serial killers.

But thrown together, this awkward pair is magic in “A Real Pain,” an enriching dramedy that had its world premiere Saturday at the Sundance Film Festival. A story of two cousins’ trip to Poland to connect with their late grandma’s roots, it’s one of the best movies of this year’s fest so far.

And it marks a major improvement from Eisenberg’s last go-round as a writer-director, 2022’s “When You Finish Saving The World.” The spark was there, yes, but not quite the execution.

Everything falls into place here. His screenplay for “A Real Pain” — inspired by details of his own life — is funny, aching and wise; the vantages of the European country he captured are steeped in history and tragedy; and he gets a performance out of Culkin that’s every bit as good as his extraordinary turn from “Succession.”

Except, you know, he’s not a complete jackass.

Eisenberg has framed the duo as a tried-and-true comedic combo — a Felix and Oscar from “The Odd Couple” — leading us to think we’re getting “National Lampoon’s Genealogic Vacation.” But the filmmaker subverts our expectations at every kilometer.

David (Eisenberg) is an introverted, responsible, successful tech worker who lives with his wife and child in New York City, while Benji (Culkin) is an unemployed life of the party up in Binghamton who loves pot and can’t control his honesty.

There is, we learn, much more to these two than sit-com tropes and frat house barbs.

They hop on a tour group in Warsaw to visit important sights of Jewish history en route to their grandmother’s childhood home that she fled in 1939.

Also clutching cameras are the recently divorced Californian Marsha (Jennifer Grey), a curious Brooklyn couple (Daniel Oreskes and Liza Sadovy) and a Rwandan-Canadian named Eloge (Kurt Egyiawan) who converted to Judaism after escaping the genocide of his home country.

“A word of warning,” says their British guide James played by Will Sharpe from “The White Lotus.” “This will be a tour about pain.” But, the scholar adds, it’s also “a tour that celebrates a people — the most resilient people.”

Impressive throughout is the way Eisenberg balances reverence for his locations and belly-grabbing comedy, while using those elements to support each other.

When they visit the Warsaw Uprising Monument, honoring Poles who stood up against the Nazis, wild-and-crazy Benji hilariously (but beautifully?) gets the buttoned-up group to pose like they’re also insurgents fighting along with the sculpture.

Later, Eisenberg depicts their solemn walk through the Majdanek concentration camp with the stoicism and straightforwardness it deserves. Words are sparse, and back on the bus a pan across the blood-drained faces that ends on a shattered, crumpled Benji knocks the wind out of you.

A few minutes later comes the funniest line in the movie. The pacing is spot-on.

Making a new European road trip flick comes with some baggage, so to speak, but even as Eisenberg walks the path many other filmmakers have, he doesn’t easily give into contrivance. Surprises abound, and his unique brand of sentimentality isn’t exactly sentimentality as we have come to understand it.

For instance, in “A Real Pain,” somebody getting slapped in the face — hard — brings tears.

Culkin gives viewers the pull-the-fire-alarm quality they love about his untethered personality on “Succession” or during award show speeches in which he muses on his ear hairs. Removed of Machiavellian motives, this would appear to just be him. Benji blurts out totally inappropriate comments that other people could never get away with. Yet, very un-Roman, his default mode is kindness; he always goes in for the hug. Culkin’s brotherly chemistry with Eisenberg, also wonderful, is totally believable.

That he is so good here comes as a relief and another sign that we are living in a Kieransance.

Eisenberg said at the end of his premiere that, with this film, his aim was to explore pain on a smaller scale (a dead grandparent, a flailing life) and on an epic one (the Holocaust). He’s succeeded and, in so doing, made a big punchy film that’s intimate and nuanced at the same time.

In short, a real pleasure.

[+ EVdude]

A Real Pain is the movie of the year, so far, for me. Having spent a month in the Kraków area with a group of initial strangers, this film resonated on so many levels…. cousin relationships, grand parent favoritism, roots, addiction, mental illness, introversion in a group dynamic… all overlain with the Holocaust.

Eisenberg and Culkin were indeed the perfect cousinly ‘Felix and Oscar from “The Odd Couple”’

Big thumbs up!

[samhexum]

I will stream this eventually.

Blogger/former baseball exec Keith Law's take:

Jesse Eisenberg has come into plenty of acclaim as an actor, but A Real Pain, his second turn as a director and writer might herald an even brighter future on that side of the camera. He co-stars in this taut, funny, thoughtful film with Kieran Culkin, who gets the better character here and plays the absolute hell out of it, relegating Eisenberg to straight-man status for large stretches of the story, as Culkin seizes the film by the throat and refuses to let go.

The two men play cousins, David (Eisenberg) and Benji (Culkin), who meet up at an airport at the start of the film as they embark on a weeklong tour of Poland that is focused on the history of Polish Jews, including a visit to a concentration camp, after which the two will peel off on their own and visit the house where their recently deceased grandmother grew up. Both were close to her, but Benji was especially so, and he has struggled to cope with her death. The two form a classic odd couple, as David is successful, straitlaced, anxious, and extremely worried about Benjy; while Benjy is outspoken, charming, unbounded, and seems to lack a purpose in life.

The two are joined on a tour by the recently divorced Marsha (Jennifer Grey), a man who fled the Rwandan genocide as a boy and later converted to Judaism (Kurt Egyiawan), and a somewhat older Jewish couple with an ancestor from Poland who came to the U.S. well before World War II (Daniel Oreskes & Liza Sadovy). The tour guide, James (Will Sharpe), isn’t Jewish, for which he seems to apologize in every other sentence, and he takes his job as guide extremely seriously.

Benjy is the smoke bomb thrown in the middle of the group, as he swears constantly, asks uncomfortable questions, and generally speaks his mind even in situations where decorum might call for him to say less. He’s the conscience of the story, though, saying what needs to be said, even if his delivery could use some work. David, of course, is appalled by much of his cousin’s behavior – including Benjy smuggling cannabis into Poland – but also envies Benjy’s apparently carefree attitude and the way that other people gravitate so much more strongly to his cousin, something that’s especially apparent as the two men say goodbye to the tour group to go to their grandmother’s hometown.

The visit to the Majdanek concentration camp, which fleeing Nazi forces failed to destroy as Soviet troops approached, also provides Eisenberg with one of his strongest scenes as director. The imagery is so potent that it requires very little dialogue, and you would expect these people to be nearly silent in their discomfort, horror, grief, and so on. The shots of the tourists walking by the gas chamber are brief, but so strong, and when it’s followed by James’s explanation that the blue stains on the walls are the residues of the hydrogen cyanide gas used to murder Jews and other inmates at the camp, it ties back somberly to something Benjy said earlier to the group that at the time might have seemed histrionic. The script ends up validating Benjy many times over, without exactly excusing some of his more boorish actions.

Culkin is on another level here, way beyond the solid performances he gave on Succession; Benjy is far more interesting and nuanced than Roman, who was an entitled and often gross little prat, and didn’t have a lot of redeeming qualities or even a good reason for why he was the way he was. Benjy is such a rich, intelligently written character, and Culkin plays him perfectly, making it clear why he is the life of the party while also showing that that’s something of a façade. He’s much better than Eisenberg, who plays that character he nearly always plays, the nebbish, fast-talking guy who doesn’t seem to have feelings; there is one scene, at a restaurant, where Eisenberg gets the floor, and we finally see inside David, and the film could probably have used a little more of that. Sharpe, who was so good in Giri/Haji and very good in The White Lotus, is excellent in a smaller role, nailing his interactions with Benjy so that you feel his discomfort and understand the evolution of his reactions over the course of the tour.

The only film I’ve seen in this cycle that was better than this is Anora, and that’s largely because that film is more ambitious; A Real Pain is tight and trim at 90 minutes and wastes none of it, doing what it set out to do and dropping you back at the airport before you know what hit you. Culkin seems like a lock to get a nomination for Best Supporting Actor, and I really hope this ends up with a Best Picture nod or, at worst, a Best Original Screenplay nomination for Eisenberg. It’s better than Conclave and so much better than Emilia Pérez, just to name two movies that have better current odds for a Best Picture nod. I can not imagine I’ll see ten better films from 2024 than this.

[Manhattan]

It's not a bad little film. The kind of trying very hard indie you used to see at the Angelika. 
 

Let's be clear, Eisenberg and Caulkin are not good actors, but they don't have to be in this movie. They both play at being a stereotypical pair of relations in a group of stereotypical tourists led by a stereotypical guide. The expected happens, sometimes amusingly.
 

It's a very lean year for movies. When A Real Pain and Anora are contenders for BEST picture, instead of honorable mentions at the Big Apple Film Festival, you know the quest for outstanding achievement has been abandoned.  

[samhexum]

Now available on HULU.

[cany10011]

Watched it. Caulkin really is typecasted as a pain in the axx loser, like he is in Succession. Didn’t like the film. 

Edited January 17 by cany10011

[Alpha714]

I really liked the film. Thought it was very original and interesting. 

[samhexum]

On 1/18/2025 at 11:28 PM, Alpha714 said:

I really liked the film. Thought it was very original and interesting. 

Ditto

[MikeBiDude]

I just watched it on Hulu (thanks @samhexum) and I really liked it.

[d.anders]

It's gotten great press. It's on my list to see.

[samhexum]

It got nominated for Best original screenplay and supporting actor (Culkin).

[+ BenjaminNicholas]

Watched it last night.  I enjoyed the editing and cinematography. 

I disliked the acting and script.  It felt like the Temu version of a Woody Allen film.

Culkin has played a version of the same character in everything he's done.  I don't get the raves.  I especially don't get the Oscar nom.

That said, I'm always happy to see a small film do well. 

 

[MikeThomas]

Watched it last night.  Loved this film!

 

[d.anders]

I was surprised by how much I enjoyed this film. It is a serious creative effort by Jesse Eisenberg, who also wrote and directed. I've never been much of a fan, but Jesse Eisenberg sure is talented. And he doesn't look bad stripped down to his underwear. The film is well written, offering very difficult dialogue throughout many awkward moments. I found the acting and the directing quite skillful. Everyone seems to be talking about Kieran Culkin's performance, but Jesse's is far more emotional and touching. I almost didn't recognize Will Sharpe (from White Lotus), or Jennifer Grey (from Dirty Dancing). Terrific performances from everyone. Very good casting.

Maybe the film resonated with me because I've traveled with family members who could be difficult at times.

(Edit) Thank you for merging my post. I thought I did a search, but guess not. And to think I made a post last January. Getting older.

 

Edited February 11 by d.anders

[MikeBiDude]

I too enjoyed the movie, and yes Jesse’s shirtless bathroom scene was worth a quick “rewind” 😉

Kieran Culkin is coming into his own as an actorI think…

[TonyDown]

Streamed it tonight on Hulu.  My kind of movie.  Awesome. Poignant.  Kieran Culkin was perfect.

Saw this video of Eisenberg from the Oscars tonight.  He is so talented.

 

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[Ali Gator]

Saw this today - loved it. Anyone who wonders why Culkin picked up the Best Supporting Actor Oscar over Jeremy Strong (who gave a fine performance in 'The Apprentice') just has to watch the last 30 seconds or so of Culkin sitting in the airport - and you will see a great actor's performance. If that doesn't bring tears to your eyes, nothing will. 

A great surprise to see Jenifer Grey in the movie as 'Marcia', giving such and understated yet important performance. (I thought it was Melissa Rivers, until I saw the credits).