Cousins, missed stops, and transgenerational memory: the irresistible chaos of A Real Pain

I’m drawn to films that speak of solitude, distracted lives, complicated characters, and difficult truths. When they manage to do so with a light touch, I’m always in.

A Real Pain confronts precisely these existential themes, and it does so with that off-kilter grace of people who discuss profound emotions while pretending not to. Written and directed by Jesse Eisenberg - who also stars in the film - the movie nudges us to reflect on a few emotionally complex questions. Genealogy, for instance: who said it’s always a happy thing? Spoiler: it almost never is.

Discovering where your grandmother lived can turn out to be less epic than imagined, and more… disappointing. At least, that’s the case for Benji (Kieran Culkin) and David (Jesse Eisenberg), two polar-opposite cousins who embark on a road trip across Poland to honor their late grandmother. The mission is simple: pay homage to their roots. Reality, as it often does, proves far more convoluted.

Benji is a volcano undecided about whether to erupt; David is the one who keeps emotions in neat folders, as if managing an inbox. Watching them interact is like observing a stretched elastic: two extremes simultaneously attracting and repelling, oscillating between sarcasm and affection, irritation and complicity. On this emotional pilgrimage, one inevitably recognizes fragments of similar dynamics in past relationships: chaos versus composure, laughter masking pain, patience tested to its limits.

Between guided tours, hotels that scream “sad carpets and fluorescent lights,” and a series of awkward yet tenderly dysfunctional moments of cohabitation, the film builds an invisible dialogue between the two protagonists. Their bond is revealed not through declarations, but through gestures, silences, and clipped quips… because some affections are never spoken aloud; they leak through, like smoke from a poorly closed window.

And then we reach the unspoken question, the one we might prefer not to ask: how much right do we have to be happy? And if, despite every right and possibility, we simply can’t achieve it?

David is the settled man, married with children, one who followed the instructions to the letter. Benji is the loose cannon, the man who’s stumbled through addiction, depression, and pain - and can laugh about it. Happiness, both in this film and in real life, is capricious, often absent, and always hard to grasp. It doesn’t reward merit or emotional resume, prompting us to ask how transgenerational memory shapes it: what does it mean to be the grandchild of survivors, and how do subsequent lives inherit - or sometimes reject - that past?

Kieran Culkin’s extraordinary, heartfelt portrayal of the adorably flawed Benji earned him the Oscar for Best Actor at this year’s 97th Academy Awards.

Eisenberg, in crafting the script, has spoken of drawing from personal and familial experiences, particularly regarding Jewish memory and sibling bonds. A carefully executed experiment, the film was celebrated at the 2024 Sundance Film Festival, winning the Waldo Salt Screenwriting Award in the U.S. Dramatic section. At the British Academy of Film and Television Arts (BAFTA), it earned two awards: Best Supporting Actor for Culkin and Best Original Screenplay for Eisenberg.

As a director, Eisenberg opts for a lightness that doesn’t dilute the gravity of his themes but rather deepens them. He presents Poland not as a postcard but as a living site of memory - full of edges, silences, and histories that defy neat categorization. The visit to a concentration camp is not treated as a rhetorical climax: it is a pause of stark reality, unadorned by music or commentary, in a sequence that lingers in quiet, inescapable resonance.

A Real Pain is a compact film - 90 minutes of surgical precision - yet dense with emotional fissures, uneven rhythms, and well-measured humor. It does not seek catharsis; it eludes it gracefully. Instead of a conventional happy ending, it leaves an aftertaste: a bittersweet sensation that clings like a stubborn memory, refusing to fade once the credits roll.

The film does not aim to heal. Rather, it invites us to dwell in that uncomfortable space where memory meets irony, where laughter does not erase pain but renders it bearable. To exist is not easy, and certain mental entanglements are the privilege of the fortunate. And because - let’s admit it - not every journey has a destination. Some end where they began: within ourselves, with the sharp, punctual realization that life, with all its complications, is indeed… a real pain.

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Bianca curates and writes for The Olive Press, a space for reflections on cinema, culture, and landscape born within Il Giardino di Cristina.

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