“We’re on a fucking Holocaust tour. If now is not the time and place to grieve, to open up, I don’t know what to tell you, man.”
Every year on Oscar nominations morning, there is always one movie that gets “snubbed.” Before the announcements, most predictions for best picture included this film, which it shockingly missed out on in favor of the 2024 Brazilian film “I’m Still Here.” Despite this, it still received two nominations for Best Original Screenplay and Best Supporting Actor, being heavily favored to win for the latter. Because of this, I still feel it is important to talk about…
The plot follows two Polish American cousins, David (played by Jesse Eisenberg, who also wrote and directed the film) and Benji Kaplan (played by Kieran Culkin in an Oscar-nominated performance), who have grown apart over time. Their grandmother recently died and she set aside some money for her grandchildren to visit her birth country of Poland, which she fled to escape the persecution of Jewish people during the Holocaust. They join a tour group led by a gentile tour guide named James (played by Will Sharpe) to travel across Poland and see WWII memorials and former sites of Jewish life.
While David is a more reserved and socially awkward person, Benji is extremely social but frequently lashes out at everyone else around him. They each have a lot of unresolved emotional pain from their grandma’s recent passing and tensions that have been long brewing between the both of them. Through this tour of traumatic events, they can each grow and bond together as better people.
One of the locations visited in the movie is the Majdanek Concentration Camp outside of Lublin, and was granted special permission to film there. Instead of a period film asking to reenact unfathomable tragedies on these burial grounds, the contemporary setting of “A Real Pain” and its realistic depiction of Holocaust tours led to this unique exception. The scene is a startling wake up call, enabling the film to take a break and reflect on what it means to be observing suffering from a relative place of privilege.
Eisenberg’s script is sharp and hilarious but still makes sure to treat grief and trauma with the respect and gravity that it deserves. This ability to balance these two disparate tones so well is a testament to his skill as a writer, and I would love it if he would be able to win the Oscar for it, but this is sadly unlikely. However, Kieran Culkin’s performance is both hilarious and quietly tragic, and he deserves his all but guaranteed Oscar.
I watched the film with my grandma, and as our family is part Polish, we anticipated this movie heavily. Her thoughts on the film are down below:
“I liked it even more the day after I saw it, so I rewatched it again the day after and loved it. These two people are so different and trying to enjoy each other’s company and their only thing in common is that they are cousins. They want to spend time with each other but it is just difficult.”
I agree that the film was extremely heartwarming, and I hope more people check it out after its Oscar nomination. My final rating for “A Real Pain” is a heartwarming 9/10.