I wasn’t all that impressed with Jesse Eisenberg’s directing debut, the teen drama When You Finish Saving the World. His second movie as director, A Real Pain, is a different matter. His direction remains unflashy, making the tone light or heavy as the story needs and moving easily from scene to scene. However, he’s the writer of this comedy as well, and that makes all the difference, because he turns out to write jokes as funny as any full-time comedy writer’s. He also stars in this, and he proves that he’s no dilettante behind the camera. Even if he had no acting career, he could be a formidable writer and director.
He portrays David Kaplan, a new father in New York with a job selling something that everybody hates: banner ads on websites. His cousin Benji (Kieran Culkin) is almost the same age and is the opposite of him, tousle-haired, extroverted, unemployed, childless, and prone to running his mouth with obscenities. They’re both on a guided tour of Poland, where their late, Holocaust-surviving grandmother grew up. She willed them some money to travel to their ancestral homeland, and since Benji has been in a personal tailspin ever since her death, maybe this is what he needs. That’s more or less it for the plot, as this movie intentionally keeps itself shaggy and episodic.
While our travelers are on a Holocaust tour, the movie is nevertheless good for many laughs. Our lead actors make a potent comedy team as they bicker about incidents from their childhood, try to puzzle out the Polish language, and smoke copious amounts of marijuana, which Benji has had shipped to himself. (He picks it up at his hotel’s concierge desk in Warsaw. It’s wrapped in clear plastic. Anyone can tell that it’s weed. Is it really that easy to smuggle drugs into Poland?) They have multiple sharp exchanges like the one when Benji instructs David on how to avoid the Polish train fare.
DAVID: This is so stupid. It’s like 12 bucks.
BENJI: It’s the principle. We shouldn’t have to pay. This is our country.
DAVID: No, it was our country. They kicked us out because they thought we were cheap.
Conversely, after Benji drunkenly insults the entire group and the country of Poland, David delivers a pained monologue where he reveals that his cousin is in even worse shape than it seems. Eisenberg is the lead here, but he happily cedes the dramatic fireworks to his co-star, and Culkin seizes the chance as a charming and witty guy who’s struggling to find any sort of traction in his life. The movie is mostly scored with Chopin’s piano music performed by Tzvi Erez, and the Polish master has a miniature piece for every mood imaginable.
Much like the group’s Oxford-educated tour guide (Will Sharpe), Eisenberg knows to tone down the antics when the movie reaches Majdanek. As that tour guide points out, the place is better-preserved than other concentration camp sites because the Nazis left in such a hurry that they neglected to tear down the buildings. The somberly reflective scene balances out the hijinks of the earlier going, and reduces Benji to tears. Eisenberg starred in another terrific road movie, The End of the Tour. Now he’s directed one that deserves to be in its league. That makes A Real Pain worthy of a “l’chaim” over a good, solid Polish beer.
A Real Pain
Starring Jesse Eisenberg and Kieran Culkin. Written and directed by Jesse Eisenberg. Rated R.
