A Real Pain review – an amus­ing and com­pelling inquiry into human pain and suffering

Try­ing to com­pre­hend the root cause of pain and the depths of the human soul is an ambi­tious task. It’s one which writer, direc­tor and actor Jesse Eisen­berg approach­es with poignant reflec­tion and laugh-out-loud humour as he tra­vers­es frac­tious polit­i­cal and per­son­al history.

Eisenberg’s third fea­ture film as writer/​director takes on the form of an ele­gant­ly-com­posed road trip movie com­plete with Frédéric Chopin sound­track. It’s a deeply per­son­al jour­ney across Poland that fol­lows two cousins, Ben­ji (Kier­an Culkin) and David (Jesse Eisen­berg), who use an inher­i­tance from their late grand­moth­er to head on a group tour led by earnest guide James (Will Sharpe doing a fine York­shire accent). The rest of the group is made up of divorcee Mar­cia (Jen­nifer Grey from Dirty Danc­ing), Mid­west­ern cou­ple Diane (Liza Sadovy) and Mark (Daniel Oreskes) and a Rwan­dan-Cana­di­an con­vert to Judaism, Eloge (Kurt Egyiawan).

Eisen­berg paid trib­ute to his fam­i­ly who were affect­ed by the hor­rors of the Holo­caust with a trip to Lublin, the for­mer con­cen­tra­tion camp Maj­danek, and the place where his great-aunt lived in Kranys­taw. In the film, the cousins vis­it the exact same loca­tions. They also spend a lot of time get­ting high on hotel rooftops as a way to recap­ture their once close bond and sur­vey the crisply shot (by cin­e­matog­ra­ph­er Michal Dymek) cityscapes and tourist spots. Just as the weed smoke hangs
heavy in the air, so too do per­ti­nent ques­tions about the cousins’ mys­te­ri­ous­ly-strained relationship.

With Ben­ji, Eisen­berg has writ­ten a very recog­nis­able male char­ac­ter and Culkin’s per­for­mance is a won­der to behold. His moods are unpre­dictable and his behav­iour impul­sive but he is also charm­ing and fun­ny. Peo­ple may be occa­sion­al­ly shocked by his frank­ness, but they are also drawn to it. On the flip­side, Eisenberg’s David is more col­lect­ed even if he is neu­rot­ic, a lit­tle repressed and not as much fun to be around. The jux­ta­po­si­tion between the two men fur­ther explores the great void that can emerge when grief and trau­ma go unaddressed.

This is a film of many jux­ta­po­si­tions and com­plex lay­ers. It delib­er­ates the joy of liv­ing in the moment while also con­sid­er­ing the con­se­quences of actions. At one point the cousins take an unplanned detour on a train ride. It’s a moment that brings to mind the exhil­a­rat­ing romance of Richard Linklater’s Before Sun­rise, with the pair’s broth­er­ly con­nec­tion blos­som­ing through risk- tak­ing and the promise of adven­ture. A Real Pain may set out its stall as an empa­thet­ic tour of pain, effort­less­ly expos­ing the qui­et and chaos of the human con­di­tion through its mul­ti­ple char­ac­ters and the places they vis­it, but it is also dis­tinct­ly a film about the bound­aries and lim­its of love.