A Real Pain
Starring Jesse Eisenberg and Kieran Culkin
Written and Directed by Jesse Eisenberg
Opening all over India on January 17
Travel films are normally an excuse for meandering plots and touristic sanctions. Not this one! Not this time. Jesse Eisenberg’s visitation to the troubled history of Poland through the lenses of contemporary relationships, fragile and unpredictable as they are, is a real ‘tour’ de force, the stress of course being on ‘tour’ .
It is an easy formula to put two contrasting characters in a travel film together. We have seen that predictable route taken a zillion times. What makes the cousins David and Benji different from the other buddy-buddy twosomes, is the kinetic energy that the two actors derive from their travel experience.
Poland , once a land of unspeakable and unpardonable violence against Jews, is no country for vacationing. But here is the thing: writer-director-actor Jesse Eisenberg has carved a moving curio dipped in such tender emotions, you wonder if this is some kind of a trick situation and a sinister bro-mance where secrets will tumble out eventually to explain why the cousins who don’t seem to get along, would want to visit their Jewish past in a country haunted by faded memories and wounds that never healed.
This is where Eisenberg’s skills as a raconteur are on glorious display. He has written a film that travels to a country with a tragic past but a bright hopeful present. More importantly, though Poland is a principal character in the narrative, it never dwarfs the drama, subdued as it is.
Admirably, Eisenberg, who made his interesting directorial debut in When You Finish Saving The World two years ago, casts Kieran Culkin as the more flamboyant, voluble, aggressive cousin in this Polish pilgrimage. And we all know, the louder performances are always lauded and applauded (and eventually uploaded also).
Not to say that Kieran is not deserving of the Golden Globe nomination (why supporting actor, when he is the lead?). He brings to the character of the brash but broken Benji an emotional brittleness that is deeply moving. However, Eisenberg, as the quieter cousin, brings up two points: are people who don’t make a noise not given the luxury of being hurt, and secondly, was Amitabh Bachchan really superior to Dilip Kumar in Shakti?
A Real Pain is a work of understated mastery. Much of it feels like a conversational piece among the two cousins and other travellers to Poland. But if you wait for the characters to grow during the journey, you will find the experience revealing and invigorating.
