A Real Pain is monumental, an incredibly touching & hilarious tour through generational trauma, the Holocaust & the ways people carry their hurt. Eisenberg articulates a specific, complex, strained family dynamic that’s weighted by a history far larger than your own.  

Probably the best movie about cousins I’ve seen, Kieran Culkin & Jesse Eisenberg are so loose, lived in opposite each other, fluidly moving between silly & serious. Culkin has rightfully already received a ton of praise for this role, bring his mercurial Roman Roy energy but with an actual beating, feeling heart underneath, yet, I was mostly struck by Eisenberg, in what’s likely his best work as an actor in years. His tightly wound demeanor works to mask the pain he’s learned to push down, but his whole body lights up when he’s put at ease by his cousin. 

I do wish the film had gone even deeper at times, exploring the country and its people even more. I suspect Eisenberg might agree, as Culkin’s character voices that sentiment towards their tour guide. But ultimately A Real Pain isn’t a movie about the past so much as it is one about the burden that the past has on the present. It’s one of the most empathetic, well-told looks at inherited trauma that I’ve seen. 

Haven’t cried this much during a movie in a looong time (though as a Polish Jew with a frayed relationship with one of my closest male cousins, it hit pretty close to home). I’m immensely thankful for its existence.