REVIEW:
Easily and unquestionably the best movie of 2024 is A Real Pain. This movie is smart and deep, but also simple and funny. It does all the right moves and is interesting at all times. And it’s short. At only about ninety minutes, it’s pretty incredible how much this movie accomplishes in the limited time it gives us to be with its characters.
This movie is about a journey. It’s the journey of two characters on a tour in Poland. The two characters are David (Jessie Eisenberg,) and Benji (Kieran Culkin.) They are cousins who were once very close, but have now grown apart. The movie completely chronicles their tour, starting with one character at the airport and the other leaving his house, and ending with that same character at the airport while the other returns home. It’s perfect symmetry. The very definition of bookending.
And the movie explores all different levels of the tour they take with others, as well as the excursion they go on by themselves. It goes from general to personal in that way, first letting us get to know the characters as they are surrounded by others, and later giving them the space and opportunity to have the real one-on-one conversations that were just waiting to come out.
The movie opens with David leaving his house and calling Benji. He leaves a message telling Benji that he should also leave soon. Then David’s in a cab, on his way to the airport. He continues to call Benji, over and over again, leaving more and more messages, updating him on traffic conditions. It’s like the scene from Swingers where Mike keeps calling a girl he just met, leaving messages, and we sit there both laughing and cringing at the same time.
When David gets to the airport, and meets Benji, the movie employs something of a rule of threes element. That means things generally happen three times, and each one builds on the other, or is different, but similar. It’s something that happens through the entire rest of the movie, and each time it gets a little deeper. For this first go at it, the rule of threes is employed for comedy. Benji is unknowingly rude. He’s out of touch with social norms. And they hit us with it right from the very start, with the first time the cousins sit down with each other.
They are sitting in the waiting room area of the airport, waiting for their flight to be called, and David takes out a bag of nuts. He asks Benji if he wants some. Benji ends up taking the whole bag, talking as he eats, and ends up forgetting they are David’s. Soon, when David takes them back, Benji tells him, “have as much as you want.” After that, it’s on the flight, when Benji says, “mind if I take window,” and runs along without waiting for an answer. And then when they first check into the hotel, and David tells Benji he needs a shower, and gets all ready to take one before Benji says, “mind if I go first,” and takes David’s phone to listen to music while he’s in the shower, leaving David without a phone, just sitting on the bed, waiting.
This is the end of act 1. It’s the introductions act. Introducing these two main characters. Similarly and symmetrically, the final act will also feature just these two characters. But after act one, and after the boys have taken showers, they head down to the lobby to meet their tour group. James (Will Sharpe from The White Lotus, Season 2,) approaches them first. He’s their tour guide, and he brings them over to the group. Symmetrically he will be the last one to say goodbye to them later on.
When they meet the group, they sit down in the lobby of the hotel with everyone, in a circle, and introduce themselves. We meet Mark and Diane (an older, married couple,) Marcia (newly divorced mom,) and Eloge (a Nigerian who lived in Africa during some of the worst id times and has since converted to Judaism.) Each one of them says a bit about themselves, leaving our guys to go last, and tell a little bit about their grandma.
And then the tour begins. It’s the very first night they are there, and with the same no-wasting-time mentality of the film, the tour gets started on their very first night. The group heads out to look at statues.
This is act 2. It started with the boys meeting the group, goes onto the statue walk, and ends with the boys on a rooftop smoking weed together. The theme of the act is fitting into the group and starting to break down the walls a little bit. That really comes out during the statue walk. In fact, one of the best moments in the entire movie happens on the statue walk, when Benji asks David to take his picture with a giant statue of heroes fighting behind him.
Benji runs up to the statue and re-enacts what is happening, taking on the role of a soldier throwing a grenade. Then he convinces each of the other members of the group, one at a time, to join in the fun, and join the fight, posing in the picture. All but David who stands there taking everybody’s photo with tons of different cameras.
You watch as some of these group members (such as Eloge,) starts out resisting the photo and then get convinced by Benji. And what is really happening here? They are playing like kids, doing things like firing rounds from a gatling gun. And part of the fun is also watching David’s reaction to all of it, which is that he is in disbelief that all of these people can be falling for Benji’s “trick.” He doesn’t realize that the group members actually want to join in Benji’s fun, and that Benji doesn’t have to do a whole lot of convincing or arm twisting to get most of them on board.
We go from the statue afternoon to the rooftop smoking night scene, and that ends their first night in Poland together. The boys are going to be with the group for a total of two days. That comes to one afternoon, then a full day and night, and finally just one last morning. The first night ends and it is also the end of act 2. From there, we begin act 3, which is the full day and night.
This third act goes back to employing the rule of threes that was in the first act. Only I like there, where it was used for comedy, here it is used to really explore the characters in a deep way. Specifically Benji. During the course of the day, Benji basically has three meltdowns. Only they aren’t exactly meltdowns. They are times when he falls out something he sees as wrong, and questions it. Only the last one, at the dinner table in the evening is paramount to a full on meltdown, and even that isn’t too bad.
From there we are on to dinner. It’s the big climactic scene of the movie (although there is still at least one more complete act after this.) But the dinner scene is where Benji has his third and final “meltdown.” It starts with three immigrant stories. One is told by Jennifer Grey’s Marcia, about her grandfather being the pioneer of modern day pharmacies. The next is told by the older couple about an uncle who fixed up and repurposed furniture. And all of that leads us to David’s story about his grandmother.
Now to be fair, any scene that goes this deep probably has some flaws too. And this one does. First, there’s no way that David didn’t realize the grandmother was talking about Benji, in her “joke.” But then again, maybe David just slipped up o in the moment, before realizing what he said. And secondly, everything the grandmother said about Benji was true. Like he really was doing each of those things. It’s not like she calmed him lazy or was passing judgement, she was just literally saying what he was doing. And maybe that’s the reason why it hurts so much. Because it is so clearly true. And because Benji, while he knew he was doing those things, didn’t realize that his grandmother saw it that way.
And now we are with the boys on the final leg of their trip. It’s just the two of them and it starts with their last night. they find a rooftop to smoke a joint on top of while overlooking the city, which is their nightly tradition at this point. And unlike the first night, where David was all nervous about it, now he is finally comfortable. It’s small character change.
While up there on the roof, the final wave of three begins. This one is a wave of three serious conversations between the guys, about their lives and relationship with each other. Benji is angry that David doesn’t come visit him. David is angry that Benji tried to kill himself. And it all comes out here.