| A Real Pain | |
|---|---|
_poster.jpg) Theatrical release poster | |
| Directed by | Jesse Eisenberg |
| Written by | Jesse Eisenberg |
| Produced by |
|
| Starring | |
| Cinematography | Michał Dymek |
| Edited by | Robert Nassau |
Production companies |
|
| Distributed by | Searchlight Pictures |
Release dates |
|
Running time | 90 minutes[3] |
| Countries |
|
| Language | English |
| Budget | $3 million[4] |
| Box office | $24.9 million[5][6] |
A Real Pain is a 2024comedy-drama film written, directed and starred byJesse Eisenberg.[7] Aninternational co-production betweenPoland and theUnited States, the film stars Eisenberg andKieran Culkin as mismatched cousins who reunite for a Jewishheritage tour through Poland in honor of their late grandmother, but tensions between them surface amidst the backdrop oftheir family history. Its supporting cast includesWill Sharpe,Jennifer Grey,Kurt Egyiawan,Liza Sadovy, andDaniel Oreskes.
Principal photography took place primarily in Poland from May to June 2023.A Real Pain premiered at the2024 Sundance Film Festival, where it won theWaldo Salt Screenwriting Award, and was released theatrically in the United States on November 1, 2024, and in Poland on November 8 bySearchlight Pictures. The film grossed $24.9 million worldwide.
A Real Pain was critically acclaimed and receivedseveral accolades, including two nominations at the97th Academy Awards and78th British Academy Film Awards, and four at the82nd Golden Globe Awards; Culkin won theOscar,BAFTA,SAG,Golden Globe andCritics' Choice for Best Supporting Actor, while Eisenberg won theBAFTA Award for Best Original Screenplay. It was named as one of the top ten films of 2024 by theAmerican Film Institute and theNational Board of Review.
AtJohn F. Kennedy International Airport, Benji Kaplan waits for his once-close cousin, David, to arrive so they can board their flight. Using the funds left by their late grandmother, the Kaplans plan aJewish heritage tour through Poland in hopes of seeing the home she grew up in and connecting withtheir family history. Their contrasting personalities spark several arguments: Benji is a free-spirited and outspoken drifter who criticizes David for losing his former passion and spontaneity, while David is a pragmatic and reserved family man who struggles with Benji's unfiltered outbursts and lack of direction in life.
Arriving atWarsaw, David and Benji meet with their tour group members: Mark and Diane, a retired married couple fromShaker Heights, Ohio; Marcia, a recent divorcee from California; and Eloge, a survivor of theRwandan genocide whoconverted to Judaism after moving to Winnipeg. The tour is led by James, a mild-mannered, knowledgeable,gentile guide fromYorkshire. On the first day, the tour visits theMonument to the Ghetto Heroes,Grzybów Square, and theWarsaw Uprising Monument. Benji engages the whole group in assisting him in a reenactment of theWarsaw Uprising around the latter sculpture. An embarrassed David stands apart and takes pictures using the members' phones.
The group travels toLublin by train on the second day. Benji is unsettled by the incongruity of travelingfirst class on aHolocaust tour through formerNazi German-occupied Poland. David falls asleep and Benji does not wake him, which results in the cousins missing their stop. After finding their way back, James leads the group through the city's cultural sights, such as theGrodzka Gate and theOld Jewish Cemetery. Benji criticizes James's lack of authenticity during their visit to the cemetery and challenges his focus on facts and statistics. Benji continues to misbehave and make uncomfortable comments during a group dinner later that evening. When he leaves the table, David opens up to the group about the complex nature of their relationship, revealing that the two have drifted apart after Benji attempted suicide byoverdosing on sleeping pills six months earlier.
The next day, David and Benji visitMajdanek, aNazi German concentration andextermination camp, during their last day with the group. They see the gas chamber, the crematorium ovens and a huge pile of the victims' shoes. Deeply affected by what they had just witnessed, the group sits in stunned silence as their van returns to Lublin, with Benji, seated next to David, sobbing. Back at the hotel, the group members bid farewell to each other. James tells Benji that he is the first person on one of his tours to provide him with honest feedback, and thanks him for changing his perspective, although Benji does not seem to remember the outburst. The Kaplans smokemarijuana together on a hotel rooftop on their final night in Poland. Benji confronts David about his changed personality and asks why he never visits him. While David initially responds that he is busy with his wife and son, he eventually breaks down and explains that following Benji's suicide attempt, he is unable to bear the thought of a person with Benji's talent, charm and passion for life killing himself.
In the morning, the cousins travel to their grandmother's former home inKrasnystaw. Benji recalls a moment when she slapped him after he arrived late and intoxicated to dinner, which gave him a sense of clarity and humility. He laments that she was the only person who was able to keep him disciplined. David suggests that they placevisitation stones on the home as an act of remembrance, but a neighbor asks them to remove the stones because they are a tripping hazard. The pair flies back to New York and exchanges goodbyes. David invites Benji to his home for dinner and offers to give him a ride, but Benji declines the offer, prompting David to slap him. They immediately reconcile and profess that they care deeply about each other. David returns home to his wife and son, leaving a visitation stone on his doorstep, while Benji returns to his seat at the airport, observing travelers with tears in his eyes.
_(54065121408).jpg)
In August 2022, it was announced thatJesse Eisenberg would write, direct, and star inA Real Pain oppositeKieran Culkin.Emma Stone,Dave McCary and Ali Herting were set to produce forFruit Tree.[9]
Eisenberg first offered the role of Benji toEric André, who turned it down after reading the script and thinking "to go to Poland for six weeks and shoot a movie where we're just babbling about the Holocaust seems like a bummer."[10] Eisenberg was unfamiliar with Culkin's work prior to developingA Real Pain, but decided to then reach out to him based on his essence and his sister's recommendation.[11][12] He did not send Culkin the first ten pages of the script at first because he thought the role should be given to aJewish actor;[13] Culkin was raisedCatholic.[14] Eisenberg initially wanted to play Benji, as he possesses some of his characteristics, but the producers suggested that he should not take on an "unhinged" performance while directing at the same time.[13] He admitted toVulture that he had "17,000 thoughts" about casting a non-Jewish actor in a role intended for a Jewish character, "and where I come out is [Culkin] gave me an amazing gift by helping to tell this story that is very personal for my family."[15]
Culkin, on the other hand, was hesitant to jump into another "intense" project so soon after wrappingSuccession.[16] He attempted to back out ofA Real Pain two weeks before filming began, citing his need to be close to his family as the main reason,[17][18] but he loved Eisenberg's "beautiful" script andWhen You Finish Saving the World, Eisenberg's previous directorial effort.[16][17] Stone convinced him to stay on by pointing out that the entire production would essentially fall apart if he left.[18]
In November 2017, Eisenberg wrote ashort story titled "Mongolia" for the Jewish online magazineTablet.[19] The story focused on two college friends—one of whom is grounded, while the other is impulsive—who travel toEast Asia in search of the "experience of a lifetime", only to find themselves in a yurt on anecotourism center.[20] Both of the main characters were taken from two plays that Eisenberg wrote and starred in, respectively:The Revisionist (2013) andThe Spoils (2015).[21]
Eisenberg liked theOdd Couple dynamic presented in "Mongolia" and wanted toadapt it for the screen, but struggled to finish the script.[20] As he was ready to scrap the project, anadvertisement for a tour of theAuschwitz concentration camp with complimentary lunch appeared on his computer screen.[20] The image both mortified and delighted Eisenberg, as he felt "it sums up everything I think about being athird-generation survivor, which is: There's no good way to experience this. There's no perfect way to honor and revere the history, because anything you do would be in the context of modern privilege."[20]
Eisenberg comes from asecular Jewish background and hasPolish ancestry.[22][23] For twenty years, he has struggled with answering the question of how he could reconcile his "modern daily challenges" with hisAshkenazi ancestors'historical trauma asHolocaust victims andsurvivors.[24][25] When he started writingA Real Pain in 2022, which initially began as athought experiment, Eisenberg sought to place two modern, mismatched cousins struggling with "different degrees of pain," such as anxiety and depression, against the backdrop of the horrors ofWorld War II. The setting allowed him to explore those themes in a "visually explicit" manner and "implicitly" ask questions in a way that did not feeldidactic.[24]
Principal photography took place in New York City and various locations across Poland from May to June 2023.[26][27] Because Eisenberg started writing during theCOVID-19 pandemic, he used thestreet view feature onGoogle Maps and pictures he took when he traveled to Poland with his wife in 2008 to scout locations and take the tour that the characters were going on.[28]Michał Dymek, thecinematographer, is a native ofWarsaw and was raised with historical awareness of the events that occurred in his country.[28] His deep knowledge of his hometown helped Eisenberg filmmontages that would highlight Poland's beauty:[28]
I wanted the portrayal of Poland in general to feel beautiful and dynamic and colorful and all the things that I feel when I'm there. I feel it's too often depicted as bleak, fetishizing itsEastern EuropeanSoviet communist history and fetishizing the horrors of the war. And that's not the Poland I know at all. The Poland I know is vibrant and colorful and warm. So I wanted to show that side of Poland, which is a side that I hadn't seen a lot in American movies, a side that felt just completely true to me.
Dymek's main artistic idea was to work with perspective, as the film features characters who see themselves differently. He wanted to combine their observations by usingstandard lenses withlonger optics, which flattens the perspective to "play with the fact that sometimes the same image can be defined differently by choosing a differentfocal lens."[29]
The score forA Real Pain is almost entirely composed of piano pieces written by the PolishvirtuosoFrédéric Chopin, and performed by Israeli-Canadian classical pianistTzvi Erez.[2] Among the featured compositions are Chopin'sballades,études,nocturnes,preludes, andwaltzes.[30]
The trailer featuredSpoon (band)'s "The Way We Get By" and was nominated for Best Sync Usage at the2025 Libera Awards.[31]
A Real Pain premiered in the U.S. Dramatic Competition at theSundance Film Festival on January 20, 2024.[32] It also had its European premiere at theZurich Film Festival,[33] had a Polish Premiere at 22ndWarsaw Jewish Film Festival 2024 winning "Camera of David" Awards, was screened at theAmerican Film Institute Festival,[34] theBFI London Film Festival,[35] theHaifa International Film Festival,[36] theHeartland International Film Festival,[37] theLa Roche-sur-Yon International Film Festival,[38] theMar del Plata International Film Festival,[39] theNew Orleans Film Festival,[40] theNewport Beach Film Festival,[41] theNew York Film Festival,[42] theTelluride Film Festival,[43] and theValladolid International Film Festival.[44]
Shortly after its Sundance premiere,Searchlight Pictures acquired worldwide rights to the film for $10 million in an all-night auction.[45][46] It had alimited theatrical release on November 1, 2024, and began awide release on November 15.[47] The film was previously scheduled to be released on October 18, but was subsequently pushed by two weeks.[48]A Real Pain premiered in Poland at thePOLIN Museum of the History of Polish Jews as the opening film of theWarsaw Jewish Film Festival.[49][50] It was then distributed to theaters in the country on November 8, 2024.[51] The film was released in the United Kingdom and Ireland on January 8, 2025.[52] It was previously scheduled to be released on January 10, but was pushed up by two days.[51]
A Real Pain was released to digital platforms on December 31, 2024,[53] and became available for streaming onHulu in the U.S. on January 16, 2025.[54] It was released bySony Pictures Home Entertainment onBlu-ray on February 4.[55]
At its premiere at the Sundance Film Festival,A Real Pain earned rave reviews.[56] Christian Blauvelt, the digital director ofIndieWire, surveyed 166 journalists who attended the festival to determine the best competition titles of the season.A Real Pain dominated every eligible category to a degree "almost no film" had towered in the past six years; close exceptions wereCeline Song'sPast Lives andChloe Domont'sFair Play (both 2023).[57] On thereview aggregator websiteRotten Tomatoes, 96% of 269 critics' reviews are positive, with an average rating of 8.3/10. The website's consensus reads: "Led by a scene-stealing turn from Kieran Culkin,A Real Pain is a powerfully funny, emotionally resonant dramedy that finds writer-director-star Jesse Eisenberg playing to his strengths on either side of the camera."[58]Metacritic, which uses aweighted average, assigned the film a score of 85 out of 100, based on 55 critics, indicating "universal acclaim".[59]
The Hollywood Reporter's David Rooney describedA Real Pain as "funny, heartfelt, and moving in equal measure."[2] He praised Eisenberg's "impeccable" judgment and great skill at "balancing sardonicwit with piercing solemnity in a movie full of feeling, in which no emotion is unearned."[2]Owen Gleiberman forVariety welcomed Eisenberg into a "hallowed company" of actors who turned out to be born filmmakers, such asGreta Gerwig,Ben Affleck andBradley Cooper.[1] To Ed Potton ofThe Sunday Times, the story was "perfectly weighted between bleak and warm, poignant and irreverent."[60] Bill Goodykontz, in a review forThe Arizona Republic, thought Eisenberg pulled off amagic trick by making a film with "backdrops of pain and despair, both personal and existential, that is also funny, charming and something approaching uplifting."[61] ForIndieWire's annualcritics poll, of which 177 critics and journalists from around the world voted, Eisenberg's work placed second on the Best Screenplay list, behindSean Baker's script forAnora.[62]
Culkin's performance was highly acclaimed.[63]Ty Burr forThe Washington Post wrote that he "walks a line between obnoxiousness and delight; it’s a performance both liberating and touched by a deeper, more inarticulate sadness."[64]Manohla Dargis, writing forThe New York Times, thought Culkin was "shockingly great" and articulated Benji's inner turmoil through a "transparently readable, sometimes viscerally destabilizing" manner.[65] Dargis later rankedA Real Pain third on her list of the best movies of 2024.[66]Mick LaSalle of theSan Francisco Chronicle lauded his "dominating",tour de force performance, writing that Eisenberg invented a new film genre called "the Kieran Culkin movie."[67] Film journalists fromCollider,[68]The Hollywood Reporter,[69]Rolling Stone,[70]Time,[71]Vulture,[72] andTheWrap declared Culkin's performance one of the finest of the year.[73] FilmmakersLena Dunham,Tim Fehlbaum andWilliam Goldenberg praised the film.[74]
A Real Pain won theWaldo Salt Screenwriting Award at the2024 Sundance Film Festival.[75] TheAmerican Film Institute and theNational Board of Review named it one of the top ten best films of 2024.[76][77] At the97th Academy Awards, Culkin wonBest Supporting Actor while Eisenberg was nominated forBest Original Screenplay.[78] Culkin is the first actor sinceChristopher Plummer (for 2010'sBeginners) to win in the former category from a film that was not nominated forBest Picture.[79][80]
A Real Pain won both of its nominations at the78th British Academy Film Awards and the40th Independent Spirit Awards, honoring Eisenberg's script and Culkin's performance.[81][82] It also won two of its three nominations at the30th Critics' Choice Awards:Best Comedy andBest Supporting Actor.[83] The film also received four nominations at the82nd Golden Globe Awards, includingBest Motion Picture – Musical or Comedy, and wonBest Supporting Actor – Motion Picture for Culkin.[84][85] Eisenberg wonBest Original Screenplay at the29th Satellite Awards,[86] while Culkin earned a nomination at the34th Gotham Awards.[87]
In March 2025, Eisenberg was grantedPolish citizenship byPresidentAndrzej Duda, following the success of the film. Eisenberg described the citizenship as "an honor of a lifetime and something I have been very interested in for two decades."[88][89]
Deadline reports thatA Real Pain had a production budget of $3 million before prints and advertising.
Mila Kunis on Culkin: 'No my boyfriend was raised Irish Catholic...'
| Producer |
|
|---|---|
| Songs | |
| Related | |
