MOVIE REVIEW – Jesse Eisenberg and Kieran Culkin lead a bittersweet dramedy about two cousins on an emotional pilgrimage to Poland, paying respects to their late grandmother. The film balances heartfelt moments with a sharp edge of irony, capturing the friction between personal struggles and the weight of historical trauma.

Over nearly two decades, Jesse Eisenberg has cultivated such a recognizable screen presence that his name could serve as shorthand for a film’s entire tone: wordy, neurotic, sharp-witted, and dripping with social anxiety. Whether he’s delivering deadpan sarcasm in The Social Network or firing off neurotic monologues in Fleishman Is in Trouble, he embodies characters that wrestle with discomfort and self-doubt. His directorial debut, When You Finish Saving the World, leaned heavily into this signature style—an indie dramedy about a fractured, socially awkward family. As The New Yorker aptly put it, it was “very Jesse Eisenberg.”

Jesse Eisenberg’s Most Jesse Eisenberg Film Yet

His second feature, A Real Pain, doubles down on that signature style. This time, though, the film carries a deeper emotional core, blending Eisenberg’s usual neurotic energy with a more reflective, melancholic undertone. (The project boasts Emma Stone and Dave McCary among its producers.) It’s a story fueled by emotional dissonance: Eisenberg plays David Kaplan, an anxious digital advertising salesman from New York, who constantly bombards his cousin Benji (Kieran Culkin) with nervous phone calls. The two are traveling to Poland to fulfill their grandmother’s last wish and, perhaps, to reconcile their own feelings of guilt over their family’s history. Their grandmother, Dory, was among the lucky ones—a Polish Jew who escaped the Holocaust and built a new life abroad.

At its core, A Real Pain grapples with philosophical questions: How does one measure individual pain against collective tragedy? How do you carry the weight of an inherited history of suffering? And what does survival mean beyond just staying alive? Yet, beyond its intellectual musings, the film thrives on the contrast between its two leads. Eisenberg and Culkin are masters of discomfort—Eisenberg as cold and analytical, Culkin as erratic and hot-headed. Benji, like Culkin’s Roman Roy in Succession, is impulsive, foul-mouthed, and reckless. Unlike Roman, though, he’s empathetic, with a rebellious streak against wealth and privilege (“Money is like heroin for boring people,” he scoffs, nearly giving David a panic attack).

Misfits on a Collision Course

Benji is clearly carrying emotional baggage, though the film is deliberately vague on the details. (He was especially close to their grandmother, a no-nonsense realist we wish we knew more about.) Culkin plays him with his trademark live-wire intensity, but Benji remains more of a cinematic construct—a perpetual Peter Pan rather than a fully realized person. He may be exhausting, but he easily wins over their fellow tourists in Poland, a group of people similarly drawn by personal connections to Jewish heritage and trauma. Marcia (Jennifer Grey), a sharp-tongued divorcee from LA, has grandparents who survived the Holocaust. Mark (Daniel Oreskes) and Diane (Liza Sadovy) trace their roots back to Poland. Eloge (Kurt Egyiawan) fled the Rwandan genocide and later converted to Judaism in Canada. The tour guide, James (Will Sharpe), delivers the film’s biggest laugh and subtly balances awkward comedy with heartfelt sincerity.

Shot on location in Poland, including at the Majdanek concentration camp, A Real Pain exudes a strong sense of place. Eisenberg and cinematographer Michal Dymek capture Warsaw, Lublin, and the Polish countryside with an observant eye, avoiding postcard perfection. This is a land marked by history, where the past lingers in graffiti-covered buildings, stark Communist-era architecture, drab hotel rooms, and railway tracks leading to places many would rather forget.

Confronting the Weight of History

Yet, despite its atmospheric depth, the film’s rhythm is dictated more by its characters’ emotional turmoil than by its setting. David is trapped in his own head, while Benji is desperately searching for something real. The narrative unfolds in a loop of symbolic gestures, philosophical debates, and character-revealing moments—each undercut by a sharp jab of irony or a self-deprecating joke. A Real Pain is, at times, insightful about suffering, occasionally funny, somewhat endearing, a touch pretentious, and often painfully self-aware. In other words, it’s exactly what you’d expect from Jesse Eisenberg.

-Gergely Herpai „BadSector”-