Keswick Film Club - Reviews - A Real Pain

Keswick Film Club's new season started with Jesse Eisenberg's Oscar nominated screenplay 'A Real Pain' which also won his co-star Kieran Culkin the best supporting actor award. We join two 'friends- for-life' cousins on a 'holocaust road-trip' – an organised tour of Poland looking at historic sites from the Jewish massacres in the second world war. So far, not comedic then? Well Eisenberg managed the almost impossible task of honouring the past (his own family's included), showing the pain it still leaves us with today, whilst adding some laugh-out-loud moments. It was success in this task that led to his screenplay being nominated.

The real winner here was the conversations he created; his ability to ring out the feelings the group on the tour were going through with just a few words was amazing, whilst Benji (played by Kieran Culkin) moved us from comedy to deepest hurt in a few seconds. Benji and David (played by Jesse Eisenberg himself) are cousins brought up almost as brothers but having drifted apart over recent years as David gets married, has a family and a real job leaving Benji still living in his mother's basement. They have joined this trip to remember their recently deceased Grandmother, which has left them both distraught, Benji the more so. It is Benji who supplies most of the comedy… being a real pain. Meaning well most of time, his open honesty left me thinking I really would hate to be on a trip with him! As the group move between towns on a first-class train, he points out that their ancestors would have been packed into cattle-cars with no food; you could feel the group's embarrassment as he stormed off into second class.

Overall, 'A Real Pain' was a thought-provoking investigation of pain, but had me laughing out loud at the same time; how did he do that?