Jesse Eisenberg has made quite the career out of playing nimble-minded, passive-aggressive, socially awkward dweebs who are bearable because they’re usually vulnerable and well-intentioned at the core. He’s smack dab in the middle of that comfort zone in “A Real Pain” as one David Kaplan, and no this is not the biopic of the popular Chicago sports media personality of the same name.
In addition to co-starring with Kieran Culkin, who is also playing a variation of a type he’s often portrayed in movies and most recently on the TV series “Succession,” Eisenberg is the director of “A Real Pain,” and with this second, feature-length stint behind the camera after “When You Finish Saving the World,” he shows considerable growth as a filmmaker. This is a smart and accomplished work with a quick wit, a palpable sense of melancholy and genuine heart.
Writer-director-producer Eisenberg perfectly casts, well, himself as the aforementioned David, a quintessential New Yorker who should find at least a measure of contentment in his life as a successful salesman (he hawks user-specific, online banner ads) with a loving and beautiful wife and an adorable toddler son but seems to be in a permanent state of nervous, restless, uncomfortable-in-his-own-skin ennui.
In honor of his recently deceased grandmother, David has funded a trip to her homeland of Poland for himself and his cousin Benji (Kieran Culkin), a room-filling personality prone to wild mood swings. They were like brothers growing up but have grown distant in recent years, what with David settling down in the city and Benji still adrift and searching for meaning in his life, not to mention a steady job and even a whiff of maturity or responsibility.
Eisenberg’s acting style has often been compared to Woody Allen’s persona (he has even starred in Allen’s films “To Rome With Love” and “Café Society”), and he has a similar directing approach as well here, framing his shots in a way that showcases the architecture and history of a place, and creating characters who are authentic and speak in a well-crafted, insightful and often hilarious manner. Before David and Benji have even arrived in Warsaw for a guided tour of World War II landmarks (their grandmother was a survivor of a concentration camp), we have a firm grasp of their complicated relationship. David is simultaneously envious of Benji’s zero-effs-to-give persona and judgmental of Benji’s aimlessness, while Benji is thrilled to be spending time with someone he considers to be a brother, but also resentful that David has on at least some level figured out life and has grown up.
The wonderful ensemble filling out the tour group includes Will Sharpe (in a very different turn from his role on “The White Lotus”) as James, the British guide who is not Jewish but is fascinated by Jewish history and culture; the well-off older couple Mark and Diane (Daniel Oreskes and Liza Sadavoy, respectively) from the Cleveland suburb of Shaker Heights; the lovely and kind and recently divorced Marcia (Jennifer Grey), and the Rwandan genocide survivor and Jewish convert Eloge (Kurt Egyiawan). Though the group is often background audience for the contentious byplay between David and Benji, there’s enough room in Eisenberg’s screenplay for every character to have a moment or two, to come across as more than the brief bios they each recite in a get-to-know-you meeting before the first day of the tour.
With the tour making a number of stops in Warsaw and Lublin, including a poignant and profoundly moving trip to the Majdanek concentration and extermination camp, Benji alternates between charming and alienating just about everyone, most prominently his cousin. Benji can be exhausting, as when he lectures the group about the inappropriateness of Jews traveling in the comfort of a first-class section of a train when their ancestors from just a generation or two ago would have been crammed into a train car and taken to be executed, but he can also be charismatic and refreshingly candid.
Kieran Culkin gives a career-best performance in taking a character who could have been a one-dimensional, shtick-reliant jerk and infusing him with a vulnerability and empathy. Just when you’re hoping David will slap him silly, you find yourself thinking what Benji really needs is a hug and some reassurance he’s not all alone in this world. Eisenberg and Culkin infuse a relatively standard-issue road-trip buddy movie with unique warmth and insight.