150 Word Review: 'A Real Pain' (2024)
Planes, trains, and feelings
A Real Pain is a travelogue: our two heroes, played by director/writer Jesse Eisenberg and Kieran Culkin, are cousins on a trip to Poland to learn where their late grandmother, a holocaust survivor, came from and suffered. There is plenty of comedy to be had during these sequences, where the cousins interact with members of a guided tour from Warsaw to Majdanek, a Nazi concentration camp.
But this isn't just a buddy picture—it's an up-close and surprisingly powerful character study. As a filmmaker, Eisenberg wrestles with heavy themes, like generational trauma and mental illness, but keeps the tone deceptively light.
Eisenberg also knows when to get out of the way of his co-star. Culkin is naturally funny—snarky and silly—but his character constantly threatens to fall apart. He’s a broken soul who feels everything, which Eisenberg’s more repressed character fears and resents. Poland plays itself—a modern country haunted by the past.