A Real Pain ****

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.

But we start off on a train with the group all sitting in a reserved first class section. They basically have their own train car, and it’s a nice, big car all to themselves. Well, Benji has a problem with this. He asks the others if any of them see the irony in all this, taking a train into Poland, sitting in luxury while their ancestors would have been “herded into the back like cattle.” The others ask what they’re supposed to do about that? Feel guilty? Benji shows them when he gets up and leaves, moving to a much lesser car. The older gentleman has a funny remark as Benji’s going, saying, “I don’t think you’ll find much differing back there either.”
This train car situation was the first of Benji’s meltdowns. The second one comes at a graveyard. They are walking through it, taking things in, and their tour guide James is just firing off fact after fact. Benji calls him out on it, basically telling James to shut up (but in much nicer words.) He tells James, these are real people here. He wants the tour to not just be about facts, but about having some quiet time to process their own thoughts and feelings. And Benji calls out the tour for being inauthentic since they haven’t actually met a single person who is Poland.
This graveyard scene isn’t so much a meltdown as it is a reasoning. James is taken aback by Benji’s comments at first, and resists them, but slowly he starts to realize that Benji is right. And you see a complete change in James’ character, speech, and agenda once that happens. It’s a pretty fantastic scene. For Benji it’s one of the scenes we can actually get on board with. He’s not belittling to James or trying to make the guy feel bad. He’s not on a power trip. And when James suggests putting stones on someone’s grave, Benji is the first to say it’s a great idea.

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.

Benji was very close to his grandmother. In fact, in a certain sense she was like his best friend. They spoke on the phone every Thursday. And they had a special bond. Well, David’s story is meant to be more like a joke, but ends up revealing to Benji what his grandmother really thought of him. The idea is that their grandmother once said, “first generation immigrants have to work really hard at terrible low level jobs, second generation immigrants get to become doctors and lawyers, and third generation immigrants get to live at home in their mothers basements smoking pot all day.” And of course, this is exactly Benji’s situation. In other words, the grandmother was talking about him.
This story, or really one-line situation is deep on a couple of levels. First it reveals what the grandmother thought of Benji, second it tells stories about different types of immigrants at different levels, and lastly it shows how different she considered herself and Benji. You see, she was a first generation immigrant and he a third. The two situations that were the furthest apart. The story basically says that first level immigrants had to sacrifice do second level immigrants could do well, just for third level immigrants to throw it all away. And as far as the showing how different he and his grandmother were (or how different she really thought they were,) Benji thought he and his grandmother were on the same level..  that they had this bond that nobody else could understand. They even had a secret language.

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.

The other thing this revelation does for Beni is let him know that his grandmother wasn’t always honest with him like he thought she was. Benji believed his grandmother was the only one in the family who would keep him honest, meaning call him out on things, and not let him get away with being a fool. But here, he learns she was not so honest with him after all, and really had thoughts that she didn’t share with him, (like this view on different generations of immigrants.)
This revelation by Benji leads to him getting especially upset. He bangs a utensil that goes flying in the air, and burps loudly more than once. He leaves the table, and that’s when it’s David’s turn to explain some things about Benji to the group. This continues the rule of threes, as David’s monologue hits three different levels. First, it’s about love, and how great he thinks Benji is. He tells them that Benji sees people so clearly. Benji’s sensitive but then you say the wrong thing and he can completely switch.
Then the second level is that David moves onto jealousy, saying things like, “yes, he’s in pain, but do what? isn’t everyone in pain? My pain is unexceptional. I want to be him.” And then finally, the third level is anger. David says, “how can the product of all this, this amazing immigrant, do something like he did…  he overdosed on a bottle of sleeping pills. He’s so funny and so charming. But I have this picture right now of him passed out on a ratty couch and it kills me.”
What’s funny is all of this is interrupted by Benji at the piano, starting to play music. So even David’s rant, even the moment when he most thinks these people will hear him and take his side, is interrupted and overtaken by Benji. David leaves the restaurant to go back to the hotel, and we hear the sounds of Benji finishing his song and being applauded and congratulated by everyone, played over Benji’s walk. Juxtaposing the audio from one scene with the visuals from another like this, makes you wonder if  all the acclaim Benji’s getting is just in David’s head… just what he’s thinking about while walking, and if the group is really still unhappy with Benji for his dinner table behavior.
The next day, the group goes to the concentration camp. It’s quiet and somber just like it should be. It isn’t over exploited or anything like that. In fact, the biggest story moment of it comes after they are back on the bus, when Benji breaks down crying, hunched over in his seat. The group returns to the hotel where the boys say goodbye to everyone and then continue on their way. Benji gets to biggest goodbyes from each person, as he has impacted their lives and made himself vulnerable the most in front of them. Even the tour guide gives him a very special goodbye, explaining to Benji that his feedback really did make a difference.

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.

The next day the boys go to see where their grandmother once lives. The try putting small rocks down on the doorstep, which turns out to be a very funny scene with the locals who live in the area. And then we get the second part of that wave, where Benji tells David about how their grandmother once slapped him, to make him realize how terrible he was being. It was a reality check for him. Then the finds part of the wave is at the airport, where Dave delivers on this story by slapping Benji himself.
The movie ends just as it began with David returning home to his apartment and family, while Benji stays at the airport, sitting in the waiting room, enjoying being around people. The way he loves surrounding himself with people and interacting with strangers is a key part of this movie. The Benji character  is very in touch with feelings, and sort of experiences them on a level that others don’t. He’s kind of like an alien who can experience the pain and feelings of others. That’s why he broke down crying after the concentration camp or couldn’t handle sitting in the posh, ritzy train car when his ancestors weren’t afforded the same niceties. It’s pretty deep and creative, and makes for a great character in an excellent film.