18/23
Mismatched cousins reunite to travel across Poland to honor their beloved grandmother. The adventure takes a turn as old tensions within the odd couple are revealed against the backdrop of their family history and their real ancestors settling in the diaspora. Benji Kaplan: We stay moving, we stay light, we stay agile. Benji Kaplan: The conductor comes, takes our tickets, we tell him we’re going to the bathroom. David Kaplan: Stragglers in the bathroom. David Kaplan: Sorry, are we the stragglers? Benji Kaplan: Yeah.
By the time it gets to the front, the train will be at the station and we’ll be home free. David Kaplan: This is fucking stupid. Tickets are probably twelve bucks. Benji Kaplan: That’s the rule. We shouldn’t have to pay for train tickets in Poland. David Kaplan: No, it wasn’t, it was our country. They Kicked Us Out Because They Thought We Were Cheap.
46.44 (2024). 12 Studies, Op. 25, No. 3 in F Major Screenplay by Fryderyk Chopin Performed by Tzvi Erez. Jesse Eisenberg’s second venture as writer-director promises to be something unconventional. There’s something of Richard Linklater’s BEFORE trilogy in the DNA of A REAL PAIN, with a certain legacy from Michael Winterbottom’s TRIP series. The walks, the languid shots that beg you to look beneath the surface of tourist attractions, the dialogue that meanders through an unpretentious and unstructured exploration of the meaning of life, the total absence of any “bad guys”; the near absence of any direct conflict, the merest hint of a plot point beyond the completion of a simple plan… Real Pain has the same realistic qualities as his earlier, more gripping and life-affirming films.
I’m not sure why I never really got into this movie. I think a lot of it has to do with all the supporting characters (i.e. everyone except the cousins played by Eisenberg and Kieran Culkin). Will Sharpe’s non-Jewish tour guide, the Rwandan convert, the older couple, the sexy divorcee… all the characters are very ordinary, very conventional, very boring. The actors who play them are okay, but they don’t have much to do, so they seem unnatural and lifeless, more like scenery than people. I think Eisenberg knows how to direct the camera; he knows how to put the right cinematic elements in place.
But maybe he doesn’t know how to direct actors, or maybe he just doesn’t know how to write characters. There’s never any suggestion that these people exist outside of the moments we see them, which could have been fixed with more spontaneous improvisation by the actors. he’s still something rather stiff and “written” about a lot of the things he says and does. Eisenberg’s “workaholic salesman with OCD” is largely one-dimensional, and the few moments where his character does transcend that facade feel more like forced acting than any genuine insight into something deeper. Culkin is great – perhaps a glimpse of his successor nature, if Roman Roy actually cared about people – but I think that’s just Culkin’s talent; he somehow manages to exceed what he’s working with. It’s a decent indie, with a few good laughs, a few interesting ideas, a memorable tour of Poland, and a solid performance by Culkin.