Slightly neurotic and a little anxious, David Kaplan (Jesse Eisenberg) moves and talks like he’s wound a bit too tight. He’s the type to use a flood of fast-flowing words to keep his real emotions at bay. Social decorum is important to him. So are schedules.

Neither is of high importance to his cousin, Benji (Kieran Culkin). Every family has a Benji: life of the party, always speaks his mind no matter the opinion or the situation, constantly present even at the sacrifice of the future. Benji says exactly what he feels when he feels it. It’s refreshing. It’s also unnerving.

And it all makes for great comedy in A Real Pain, Eisenberg’s masterfully written and directed film about the two cousins’ pilgrimage to their recently deceased grandmother’s home country of Poland and all of the generational trauma that comes with.

“One of the ideas about the Holocaust is that it’s not over,” says Kathryn Bernheimer, founder and programmer of the Boulder Jewish Film Festival where the film screens Nov. 10. “The ripples are still being felt in so many ways.”

David and Benji feel those ripples, both as echoes of the past when they visit Majdanek, the concentration camp their grandmother survived, and as they look to the future with two very different attitudes about navigating the contemporary world.

A Real Pain is a treat. It’s funny and sweet, and there’s a good chance David and Benji will linger in your heart long after the screen goes dark. 

A Real Pain (2024)
Written and directed by Jesse Eisenberg
Produced by Jesse Eisenberg, Ali Herting, Dave McCary, Ewa Puszczyńska, Jennifer Semler, Emma Stone
Starring: Jesse Eisenberg, Kieran Culkin, Will Sharpe, Daniel Oreskes, Liza Sadovy, Kurt Egyiawan, Jennifer Grey, Ellora Torchia
Searchlight Pictures, Rated R, Running time 90 minutes, Premiered Jan. 20, 2024 at the Sundance Film Festival

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The above review first appeared in the pages of Boulder Weekly Vol. 32, No. 12, “This is gonna hurt.”