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A Real Pain
Theatrical release poster
Directed byJesse Eisenberg
Written byJesse Eisenberg
Produced by
Starring
CinematographyMichał Dymek
Edited byRobert Nassau
Production
companies
Distributed bySearchlight Pictures
Release dates
  • January 20, 2024 (2024-01-20) (Sundance)
  • November 1, 2024 (2024-11-01) (United States)
  • November 8, 2024 (2024-11-08) (Poland)
Running time
90 minutes[3]
Countries
  • Poland
  • United States
LanguageEnglish
Budget$3 million[4]
Box office$24.9 million[5][6]

A Real Pain is a 2024 comedy-drama film written and directed by Jesse Eisenberg.[7] An international co-production between Poland and the United States, the film stars Eisenberg and Kieran Culkin as mismatched cousins who reunite for a Jewish heritage tour through Poland in honor of their late grandmother, but their old tensions resurface against the backdrop of their family history. Its supporting cast includes Will Sharpe, Jennifer Grey, Kurt Egyiawan, Liza Sadovy, and Daniel Oreskes.

Principal photography took place primarily in Poland from May to June 2023. A Real Pain premiered at the 2024 Sundance Film Festival, where it won the Waldo Salt Screenwriting Award, and was released theatrically in the United States on November 1, 2024, and in Poland on November 8 by Searchlight Pictures. The film received critical acclaim and grossed $24.9 million worldwide.

A Real Pain received several accolades, including two nominations at the 97th Academy Awards and 78th British Academy Film Awards, and four at the 82nd Golden Globe Awards; Culkin won the Oscar, BAFTA, SAG, Golden Globe and Critics' Choice for Best Supporting Actor, while Eisenberg won the BAFTA Award for Best Original Screenplay. It was named as one of the top ten films of 2024 by the American Film Institute and the National Board of Review.

Plot

[edit]

At John 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 a Jewish heritage tour through Poland in hopes of seeing the home she grew up in and connecting with their 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 at Warsaw, David and Benji meet with their tour group members: Mark and Diane, a retired married couple from Shaker Heights, Ohio; Marcia, a recent divorcee from California; and Eloge, a survivor of the Rwandan genocide who converted to Judaism. The tour is led by James, a mild-mannered, knowledgeable, gentile guide from Yorkshire. On the first day, the tour visits the Monument to the Ghetto Heroes, Grzybów Square, and the Warsaw Uprising Monument. Benji engages the whole group in assisting him in a reenactment of the Warsaw Uprising around the latter sculpture. An embarrassed David stands apart and takes pictures using the members' phones.

The group travels to Lublin by train on the second day. Benji is unsettled by the incongruity of traveling first class on a Holocaust tour through former Nazi 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 the Grodzka Gate and the Old 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 by overdosing on sleeping pills six months earlier.

The next day, David and Benji visit Majdanek, a Nazi German concentration and extermination 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 smoke marijuana 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 in Krasnystaw. 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 place visitation 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.

Cast

[edit]
Left to right: Jennifer Grey, Kieran Culkin, Jesse Eisenberg, Will Sharpe, and Kurt Egyiawan

Production

[edit]

Casting

[edit]

In August 2022, it was announced that Jesse Eisenberg would write, direct, and star in A Real Pain opposite Kieran Culkin. Emma Stone, Dave McCary and Ali Herting were set to produce for Fruit Tree.[9]

Eisenberg first offered the role of Benji to Eric 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 developing A 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 a Jewish actor;[13] Culkin was raised Catholic.[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 to Vulture 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 wrapping Succession.[16] He attempted to back out of A 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 and When 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]

Writing

[edit]

In November 2017, Eisenberg wrote a short story titled "Mongolia" for the Jewish online magazine Tablet.[19] The story focused on two college friends—one of whom is grounded, while the other is impulsive—who travel to East Asia in search of the "experience of a lifetime", only to find themselves in a yurt on an ecotourism center.[20] Both of the main characters were taken from two plays that Eisenberg wrote and starred in, respectively: The Revisionist (2013) and The Spoils (2015).[21]

Eisenberg liked the Odd Couple dynamic presented in "Mongolia" and wanted to adapt it for the screen, but struggled to finish the script.[20] As he was ready to scrap the project, an advertisement for a tour of the Auschwitz 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 a third-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 a secular Jewish background and has Polish ancestry.[22][23] For twenty years, he has struggled with answering the question of how he could reconcile his "modern daily challenges" with his Ashkenazi ancestors' historical trauma as Holocaust victims and survivors.[24][25] When he started writing A Real Pain in 2022, which initially began as a thought 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 of World 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 feel didactic.[24]

Filming

[edit]
Principal photography in Lublin

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 the COVID-19 pandemic, he used the street view feature on Google 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, the cinematographer, is a native of Warsaw and was raised with historical awareness of the events that occurred in his country.[28] His deep knowledge of his hometown helped Eisenberg film montages 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 its Eastern European Soviet 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 using standard lenses with longer optics, which flattens the perspective to "play with the fact that sometimes the same image can be defined differently by choosing a different focal lens."[29]

Music

[edit]

The score for A Real Pain is almost entirely composed of piano pieces written by the Polish virtuoso Frédéric Chopin, and performed by Israeli-Canadian classical pianist Tzvi Erez.[2] Among the featured compositions are Chopin's ballades, études, nocturnes, preludes, and waltzes.[30]

Release

[edit]

A Real Pain premiered in the U.S. Dramatic Competition at the Sundance Film Festival on January 20, 2024.[31] It also had its European premiere at the Zurich Film Festival,[32] had a Polish Premiere at 22nd Warsaw Jewish Film Festival 2024 winning "Camera of David" Awards, was screened at the American Film Institute Festival,[33] the BFI London Film Festival,[34] the Haifa International Film Festival,[35] the Heartland International Film Festival,[36] the La Roche-sur-Yon International Film Festival,[37] the Mar del Plata International Film Festival,[38] the New Orleans Film Festival,[39] the Newport Beach Film Festival,[40] the New York Film Festival,[41] the Telluride Film Festival,[42] and the Valladolid International Film Festival.[43]

Shortly after its Sundance premiere, Searchlight Pictures acquired worldwide rights to the film for $10 million in an all-night auction.[44][45] It had a limited theatrical release on November 1, 2024, and began a wide release on November 15.[46] The film was previously scheduled to be released on October 18, but was subsequently pushed by two weeks.[47] A Real Pain premiered in Poland at the POLIN Museum of the History of Polish Jews as the opening film of the Warsaw Jewish Film Festival.[48][49] It was then distributed to theaters in the country on November 8, 2024.[50] The film was released in the United Kingdom and Ireland on January 8, 2025.[51] It was previously scheduled to be released on January 10, but was pushed up by two days.[50]

Home media

[edit]

A Real Pain was released to digital platforms on December 31, 2024,[52] and became available for streaming on Hulu in the U.S. on January 16, 2025.[53] It was released by Sony Pictures Home Entertainment on Blu-ray on February 4.[54]

Reception and legacy

[edit]

Critical response

[edit]

At its premiere at the Sundance Film Festival, A Real Pain earned rave reviews.[55] Christian Blauvelt, the digital director of IndieWire, 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 were Celine Song's Past Lives and Chloe Domont's Fair Play (both 2023).[56] On the review aggregator website Rotten 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."[57] Metacritic, which uses a weighted average, assigned the film a score of 85 out of 100, based on 55 critics, indicating "universal acclaim".[58]

The Hollywood Reporter's David Rooney described A Real Pain as "funny, heartfelt, and moving in equal measure."[2] He praised Eisenberg's "impeccable" judgment and great skill at "balancing sardonic wit with piercing solemnity in a movie full of feeling, in which no emotion is unearned."[2] Owen Gleiberman for Variety welcomed Eisenberg into a "hallowed company" of actors who turned out to be born filmmakers, such as Greta Gerwig, Ben Affleck and Bradley Cooper.[1] To Ed Potton of The Sunday Times, the story was "perfectly weighted between bleak and warm, poignant and irreverent."[59] Bill Goodykontz, in a review for The Arizona Republic, thought Eisenberg pulled off a magic trick by making a film with "backdrops of pain and despair, both personal and existential, that is also funny, charming and something approaching uplifting."[60] For IndieWire's annual critics poll, of which 177 critics and journalists from around the world voted, Eisenberg's work placed second on the Best Screenplay list, behind Sean Baker's script for Anora.[61]

Culkin's performance was highly acclaimed.[62] Ty Burr for The 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."[63] Manohla Dargis, writing for The New York Times, thought Culkin was "shockingly great" and articulated Benji's inner turmoil through a "transparently readable, sometimes viscerally destabilizing" manner.[64] Dargis later ranked A Real Pain third on her list of the best movies of 2024.[65] Mick LaSalle of the San Francisco Chronicle lauded his "dominating", tour de force performance, writing that Eisenberg invented a new film genre called "the Kieran Culkin movie."[66] Film journalists from Collider,[67] The Hollywood Reporter,[68] Rolling Stone,[69] Time,[70] Vulture,[71] and TheWrap declared Culkin's performance one of the finest of the year.[72] Filmmakers Lena Dunham, Tim Fehlbaum and William Goldenberg praised the film.[73]

Accolades

[edit]
Main article: List of accolades received by A Real Pain

A Real Pain won the Waldo Salt Screenwriting Award at the 2024 Sundance Film Festival.[74] The American Film Institute and the National Board of Review named it one of the top ten best films of 2024.[75][76] At the 97th Academy Awards, Culkin won Best Supporting Actor while Eisenberg was nominated for Best Original Screenplay.[77] Culkin is the first actor since Christopher Plummer (for 2010's Beginners) to win in the former category from a film that was not nominated for Best Picture.[78][79]

A Real Pain won both of its nominations at the 78th British Academy Film Awards and the 40th Independent Spirit Awards, honoring Eisenberg's script and Culkin's performance.[80][81] It also won two of its three nominations at the 30th Critics' Choice Awards: Best Comedy and Best Supporting Actor.[82] The film also received four nominations at the 82nd Golden Globe Awards, including Best Motion Picture – Musical or Comedy, and won Best Supporting Actor – Motion Picture for Culkin.[83][84] Eisenberg won Best Original Screenplay at the 29th Satellite Awards,[85] while Culkin earned a nomination at the 34th Gotham Awards.[86]

Legacy

[edit]

In March 2025, Eisenberg was granted Polish citizenship by President Andrzej 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."[87][88]

References

[edit]
[edit]
Revisions and contributorsEdit on WikipediaRead on Wikipedia

A Real Pain

View on Grokipedia
from Grokipedia

A Real Pain is a 2024 American-Polish comedy-drama film written and directed by Jesse Eisenberg, starring Eisenberg and Kieran Culkin as mismatched cousins David and Benji who reunite for a group tour of Holocaust sites in Poland to commemorate their late grandmother's life and heritage.
The story explores the cousins' strained relationship amid historical reflections, with tensions arising from Benji's disruptive behavior during visits to sites like Majdanek concentration camp and Lublin's Jewish quarter, where much of the film was shot on location to capture authentic Eastern European settings.
Released theatrically in the United States on November 15, 2024, following a limited debut on November 1, the 89-minute film earned praise for its sharp dialogue, emotional depth, and the leads' performances, achieving a 96% critics' score on Rotten Tomatoes based on over 270 reviews.
Financially modest with a U.S. gross of approximately $8.3 million, it secured significant recognition including four Golden Globe nominations where Culkin won Best Supporting Actor in a Motion Picture, alongside Academy Award nominations for Eisenberg's original screenplay and Culkin's supporting role.

Synopsis

Plot Summary

Mismatched cousins David Kaplan, a reserved and professionally successful advertising executive, and Benji, his more charismatic yet emotionally volatile relative, reunite after the death of their beloved grandmother to join an organized Jewish heritage tour through . The itinerary traces sites of and , including the near and remnants of the , as a means to honor their grandmother's roots in the region. As the group travels, underlying frictions between the cousins intensify, fueled by Benji's impulsive and disruptive actions amid the tour's somber reflections, culminating in a heated personal confrontation. The narrative unfolds as a road-trip dramedy, blending comedic mishaps with dramatic interpersonal revelations, before the pair parts ways ambiguously at Warsaw's airport following the 10-day journey.

Cast and Characters

Principal Performances

Jesse Eisenberg stars as David Kaplan, embodying the character's subtle repression and intellectual detachment through restrained physicality and measured dialogue. Critics commended Eisenberg's shift from his archetypal neurotic personas, highlighting his ability to convey internal conflict via understated gestures and pauses that underscore David's emotional guardedness. This approach facilitates a naturalistic interplay with his co-star, positioning the film as an effective character-driven double act where observation amplifies tension without overt dramatics. Kieran Culkin portrays Benji, infusing the role with volatile energy and raw vulnerability that channels the character's unprocessed grief into unpredictable outbursts and poignant revelations. Reviewers lauded Culkin's intensity, akin to his Emmy-winning work in Succession, for authentically capturing trauma's disruptive force through improvisational flair and emotional volatility. His performance garnered significant awards recognition, culminating in the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor on March 2, 2025. The principals' screen times—Eisenberg at 62 minutes and 29 seconds (69.77%) and Culkin at 58 minutes and 6 seconds (64.88%) in the 89-minute runtime—ensure their contrasting styles propel the narrative, with dialogue exchanges serving as pivotal mechanisms for revealing character depths and relational friction. This balanced allocation amplifies the duo's chemistry, where Eisenberg's composure offsets Culkin's dynamism to sustain dramatic momentum.

Supporting Cast

Will Sharpe portrays James, the British tour guide who leads the Jewish heritage group through , offering contextual insights into historical sites and mediating group tensions during visits. His role introduces an outsider's informed perspective on the region's , contrasting with the protagonists' personal stakes. Jennifer Grey plays Marcia, a tour participant described as a recently divorced older woman navigating the emotional weight of the itinerary. Liza Sadovy appears as Diane, wife to fellow tour member Mark (Daniel Oreskes), with the couple representing participants seeking deeper ancestral connections amid the group's travels. These portrayals contribute to the ensemble's interpersonal friction, as interactions with the cousins highlight varying responses to Holocaust-related landmarks. Kurt Egyiawan's Eloge adds a layer of survivor testimony to select scenes, drawing from real-world refugee experiences to underscore the tour's confrontations with trauma. Polish actors, including Jakub Gasowski as a hotel receptionist, along with non-professional locals cast in background roles, enhance the film's authenticity in Lublin and Warsaw settings, grounding the narrative in everyday Eastern European milieu without scripted dominance.

Production

Development and Writing

Jesse Eisenberg conceived the story for A Real Pain from his personal family history, particularly trips to with relatives in the 2010s that highlighted tensions in his relationship with a real-life . These experiences, combined with Eisenberg's Jewish heritage, prompted him to explore themes of familial discord during a heritage tour, evolving from material he had developed in various forms for years. Eisenberg had considered setting a in Poland for approximately 18 years prior to production, reflecting a long gestation period influenced by his ancestry and observed emotional dynamics. Eisenberg wrote the screenplay himself, beginning with drafts focused on the David before expanding to incorporate the cousin's perspective, which added depth through contrasting personalities. The script underwent refinements over several years, with a workable version completed by around 2023 to align with production timelines, shaped by iterative feedback on authentic relational conflicts drawn from Eisenberg's life. This personal causation—rooted in unresolved and heritage exploration—drove the narrative's structure as a road-trip dramedy, prioritizing intimate character interplay over broader spectacle. The screenplay's originality earned a nomination for Best Original Screenplay at the 97th in 2025, recognizing its tight, dialogue-driven evolution from autobiographical seeds. Budget constraints further molded its indie scale, with financing the $3.5 million production, necessitating economical that emphasized script efficiency and limited locations to maintain focus on interpersonal . This fiscal reality reinforced Eisenberg's first-feature lessons from When You Finish Saving the World (2022), prioritizing narrative precision over expansive resources.

Casting Process

Jesse Eisenberg cast himself in the lead role of David Kaplan to ensure authenticity, drawing on the character's introspective and structured personality, which mirrored aspects of his own experiences, while directing the film to maintain narrative control over familial dynamics. For the role of Benji Kaplan, Eisenberg initially intended to play the part himself, viewing it as the more dynamic character on the page, but opted against it upon advice from producer , who cautioned against tackling such a frantic role while directing. Eisenberg's sister recommended after reading a script scene, identifying him as the ideal fit, a suggestion aligned with Eisenberg's limited prior encounters with Culkin, whom he found emotionally expressive and charming in brief meetings totaling about six minutes over a decade. Eisenberg selected Culkin for his capacity to convey humor alongside emotional depth, avoiding the risks of self-casting that could skew the cousins' contrasting realism toward melodrama or imbalance. Culkin, fresh from wrapping the final season of Succession in 2023, initially hesitated due to exhaustion and a desire for rest but recommitted after revisiting the script approximately a year later. Prior to Culkin, Eisenberg offered the role to comedian , who declined after reviewing the material, prompting a pivot away from alternatives that might disrupt the grounded portrayal of familial tension and grief. Supporting roles, including those of tour participants and locals encountered in Poland, were filled with actors like Will Sharpe and Kurt Egyiawan to suit the international setting and cultural nuances of the Holocaust tour sequences.

Filming Locations and Techniques

Principal photography for A Real Pain occurred primarily in Poland from May to June 2023, with key locations including Warsaw, Lublin, and the Majdanek concentration camp on the outskirts of Lublin. Additional sites encompassed Krasnystaw, Radom, Grodzka Street in Lublin, Plac Krasińskich in Warsaw, and Warszawa Olszynka Grochowska railway station. These authentic Polish settings were selected to reflect the film's narrative of a Jewish heritage tour tracing the protagonists' family history, including visits to their grandmother's childhood home in Krasnystaw and Holocaust-related sites like Majdanek for historical fidelity. Cinematographer Michał Dymek employed the Mini LF camera paired with Leitz M 0.8 lenses to capture a large-format , utilizing two cameras for flexibility in actor-driven sequences. Lighting prioritized natural sources augmented by tools such as Skypanels, M9, M4, , and Aster Tubes to achieve a naturalistic yet cinematic quality. Minimal were incorporated, limited primarily to green-screen train interiors simulating travel through , avoiding extensive CGI to maintain on-location realism. Filming faced logistical hurdles, notably securing rare permissions to shoot at Majdanek, a site seldom opened for productions due to its status as preserved grounds of historical atrocity; producer Ewa Puszczyńska obtained approval through collaboration with local academics focused on Jewish memory preservation, averting a costly set reconstruction that would have consumed a third of the £3.5 million budget. Other adaptations included script rewrites after denials for scenes and guerrilla methods for train sequences using limited interior sets. The Majdanek shoot proved emotionally demanding for the crew, underscoring the production's commitment to respectful, undramatized depictions without added historical reenactments.

Post-Production

The post-production of A Real Pain was overseen by editor Robert Nassau, who focused on achieving a tonal balance between the film's dark humor, interpersonal tension, and underlying related to grief and , ultimately shaping the final runtime to 90 minutes. Nassau emphasized grounding comedic beats in realistic emotional authenticity to maintain pacing that alternated between light-hearted banter and heavier confrontations. The film's score integrates classical piano pieces by , a Polish whose works align thematically with the story's setting during a heritage tour of , performed primarily by pianist Tzvi Erez; this choice provides subtle emotional underscoring without an original composition, evoking introspection amid the cousins' journey. , including sound design and mixing, was handled by Dungeon Beach in , with sound designer and supervising sound editor Tim Korn, re-recording mixer Daniel Timmons, sound effects editor Jonathan Fuhrer, and dialogue editor contributing to a layered that captures ambient elements of Polish historical sites while contrasting them with the intimacy of personal arguments and tour group dynamics. This subtle approach prioritized heritage authenticity and emotional nuance over overt effects, refining the mix for the film's Sundance premiere on January 18, 2024.

Themes and Interpretation

Familial Bonds and Personal

The cousins and embody contrasting modes of engaging with personal , with exhibiting unfiltered emotional volatility—manifesting in outbursts and existential questioning—while employs structured suppression through and routine to manage anxiety. This divergence, catalyzed by the of their grandmother on an unspecified date prior to the film's events, positions their Polish heritage tour as a for relational , where individual agency in determines rather than shared trauma dictating inevitability. Eisenberg, drawing from his own family history, their dynamic in the grandmother's legacy, portraying it as a factual of resilience amid loss without glorifying resultant dysfunction. Interpersonal tensions arise causally from these agency-driven responses: Benji's disruptive candor forces confrontations that expose David's repressed vulnerabilities, such as private admissions of toward Benji's chaos, inverting typical power dynamics and highlighting how one individual's unchecked expression provokes the other's defensive withdrawal. The film evidences this through their bickering en route to sites tied to their grandmother's past, where Benji's public meltdowns contrast David's internal containment, illustrating not as a force but as amplified by personal choices in disclosure and restraint. Such realism underscores causal realism in familial bonds, where historical legacy informs but does not predetermine emotional outcomes. The narrative critiques idealized therapeutic resolutions by depicting repression's persistence as a credible strategy amid , with David's reliance on pharmacological aids revealing limits to verbal processing when confronted by Benji's immediacy, thus prioritizing empirical observation of flawed agency over prescriptive fixes. Post-release audience responses in 2024, including verified reviews aggregating to 92% approval on , affirm the relatability of these bonds, with viewers citing personal echoes in cousinly resentments and uneven navigation as evoking authentic emotional realism.

Holocaust Memory and Jewish Identity

In A Real Pain, the organized tour of Polish sites, including Majdanek and Treblinka, serves as a backdrop that exposes varying degrees of superficiality in participants' encounters with , rather than guaranteeing deepened remembrance. Benji, portrayed as more viscerally affected by the sites' remnants—such as the preserved gas chambers at Majdanek—erupts in confrontations with tour guides and fellow travelers, critiquing the rote recitation of facts detached from personal reckoning. This dynamic illustrates how structured tourism can amplify emotional disconnects, with Benji's raw responses contrasting the group's more passive absorption of narratives about the that murdered six million Jews through systematic extermination camps, shootings, and ghettos between 1941 and 1945. The film's narrative challenges presumptions of universal cathartic benefits from such visits, emphasizing individual variances in processing inherited rather than collective healing. Systematic reviews of Holocaust-related reveal emotional ambivalence among visitors, with reports of heightened distress alongside sporadic insights, but no consistent evidence of transformative efficacy across diverse participants. Benji's intensified agitation at sites tied to his grandmother's survival—evoking personal stakes amid the broader annihilation—highlights causal factors like prior emotional proximity influencing outcomes, over any inherent power of the locations themselves to induce uniform reflection. Depictions of Polish locales prioritize the protagonists' familial legacy—rooted in their aunt-grandmother's escape from pre-war —over narratives imputing contemporary collective guilt, framing remembrance as an idiosyncratic inheritance rather than a politicized . This approach sidesteps broader geopolitical tensions, such as debates over Polish complicity in , to center the cousins' discordant Jewish identities amid tangible ruins like Treblinka's memorial stones. Empirical accounts from site visits note similar personal focalization, where tourists' engagement hinges on biographical ties more than site-induced universality, underscoring limits to tourism's role in sustaining memory without individualized triggers.

Mental Health and Emotional Dynamics

Benji's erratic outbursts and interpersonal friction stem from unprocessed following his grandmother's death, presented not as a romanticized affliction but as a burdensome, untreated response that strains relationships without redemption. This depiction draws from director Jesse Eisenberg's observations of personal bereavement, prioritizing observable behavioral fallout over clinical abstraction. Empirical research substantiates such volatility as a hallmark of complicated grief, where unresolved loss correlates with heightened , , and relational discord persisting years post-bereavement, absent intervention. , formalized in diagnostic frameworks, manifests similarly in a minority of cases, underscoring causal ties to specific attachment disruptions rather than inherent . David's underlying anxiety, by contrast, operates as a pragmatic shaped by early family contingencies, facilitating routine functionality and amid Benji's disruptions, without devolving into dysfunction. This realism echoes causal models linking upbringing stressors to enduring vigilance mechanisms that, while taxing, adaptively buffer against acute breakdowns in high-strain kin networks. The cousins' interplay resists therapeutic closure, mirroring longitudinal data on familial strains where baseline tensions predict decade-long elevations in emotional interference and persistence, defying expectations of linear . Such chronic dynamics persist due to entrenched relational patterns, with discord—not mere support deficits—foretelling sustained psychological burdens over time. This portrayal implicitly counters media tendencies to conflate personal with blanket "inherited trauma" narratives, often amplified by academically skewed emphases on collective over individualized causal chains from discrete losses. Eisenberg's script favors granular emotional realism—tied to upbringing and recent events—over reductive pathologizing, highlighting how institutional biases in may undervalue agency in processing.

Release

Premiere and Distribution

A Real Pain premiered at the on January 20, 2024, in , screening at the Eccles Theatre as part of the U.S. Dramatic Competition section. Following the screening, acquired worldwide distribution rights in an all-night auction for approximately $10 million, marking the festival's first major deal of the year. The film continued its festival circuit, including screenings at the Aspen Film Festival on September 19, 2024, and the Rio de Janeiro International Film Festival on October 4, 2024, building anticipation ahead of theatrical rollout. handled distribution, opting for a limited U.S. theatrical release on November 1, 2024, expanding to on November 15, 2024. International expansion began in November 2024, with a release in on November 8, followed by markets in and beyond into early 2025. Marketing efforts by centered on the dynamic between leads and , highlighting their on-screen chemistry as mismatched cousins and Culkin's post-Succession momentum to align with the 2024-2025 awards season timeline. Promotional materials, including trailers and festival buzz, emphasized the film's blend of humor and emotional depth to target arthouse audiences and awards voters.

Box Office and Financial Performance

A Real Pain was produced on an estimated budget of $3 million. The film achieved a worldwide gross of $24.9 million, including $8.3 million domestically and the remainder from international markets. Its domestic release began on November 1, 2024, in limited theaters with an opening weekend gross of $228,856 across four screens, yielding per-screen averages exceeding $57,000, indicative of strong initial audience demand for the independent drama amid competition from higher-budget blockbusters. Searchlight Pictures acquired worldwide distribution rights for approximately $10 million prior to release, providing producers an upfront recoupment of production costs and positioning the film for profitability independent of theatrical earnings. This deal, combined with the gross revenue, underscores commercial viability for a low-budget indie, where ancillary markets such as streaming and international licensing further enhance returns, typically requiring theatrical grosses of 2-3 times the budget to achieve after exhibitor splits and marketing expenses. The film's appeal, driven by critical buzz and star Kieran Culkin's post-Succession draw, sustained performance through expanded release, contrasting with wider market dynamics favoring tentpole franchises.

Home Media Availability

A Real Pain became available for digital rental and purchase on premium platforms such as , Apple TV, , and Vudu starting December 31, 2024, approximately 60 days after its theatrical debut. Pricing for purchase was set at around $19.99 for UHD or HD versions, with rental options following shortly thereafter. The film arrived on subscription via in the United States on January 16, 2025, and concurrently on on Disney+ for bundle subscribers, marking its entry into broader streaming accessibility amid ongoing awards season momentum from its Golden Globe win for Best Motion Picture – Musical or Comedy. Physical home media releases followed with Blu-ray and DVD editions distributed by on February 4, 2025, including a digital code for added convenience; these formats featured standard special features typical of titles, such as behind-the-scenes content. In select international markets like the , Blu-ray and DVD availability was delayed until April 7, 2025. Global access remains platform-dependent, with digital purchase options widely available through multinational services like Apple TV and Amazon, while streaming is regionally licensed—primarily in but limited or unavailable in territories without equivalent Disney+ integrations as of mid-2025. This structure supports varied viewer entry points, from ad-supported streaming to owned copies, without universal free access.

Reception and Analysis

Critical Evaluations

A Real Pain received widespread critical acclaim, earning a 96% approval rating on based on 276 reviews, with critics consensus highlighting its "powerfully funny, emotionally resonant road trip that wrestles with the pain of the past while mining fresh insight from an age-old conflict." The film also holds a score of 85 out of 100 from 55 critics, signifying "universal acclaim" through a weighted average of professional reviews. Reviewers frequently praised the performances, particularly Kieran Culkin's portrayal of as a "scene-stealing" and "turbulent" figure whose volatility drives the emotional core, complemented by Jesse Eisenberg's restrained turn as David. The dialogue was lauded for its sharp, naturalistic banter that captures familial friction and verbal sparring, with Brian Tallerico of awarding it four out of four stars for its humane exploration of personal demons amid . Publications like commended the film's "melancholic yet funny" balance of loss and belonging, emphasizing its subtle handling of without overt didacticism. However, some critics identified tonal inconsistencies, arguing that shifts between comedy, tragedy, and tourism feel unnatural or forced, undermining the narrative's authenticity. of critiqued the "shticky bromance" as obscuring deeper probes into legacy, rendering the film stronger conceptually than dramatically and prone to superficial discomfort. Outlets expressing skepticism toward potential emotional manipulation noted the risk of leveraging generational pain for indie appeal, though such views remained minority amid the predominant positivity; for instance, a Washington Times review acknowledged the ambitious genre-blending but questioned its feasibility in sensitively addressing profound historical suffering alongside buddy-comedy elements.

Audience Perspectives

Audience members have rated A Real Pain at 7.0 out of 10 on , based on over 116,000 user votes, reflecting a generally positive but more tempered reception compared to the film's 96% critics' score on . This divergence appears in viewer feedback emphasizing the film's emotional authenticity alongside critiques of its pacing and character balance, with some noting an overreliance on Kieran Culkin's charismatic yet erratic portrayal of the cousin to carry dramatic weight, potentially overshadowing Jesse Eisenberg's more subdued performance as the protagonist. Discussions on platforms like highlight the film's raw depiction of familial tensions and grief, with users praising its unpretentious exploration of personal pain amid historical weight, though several threads point to uneven emotional resonance—effective for those relating to themes of loss or heritage but less impactful for others lacking similar experiences. General audiences often underscore the relatability of the cousins' bickering and midlife reflections, viewing the narrative as a grounded buddy-road-trip dramedy, whereas Jewish viewers express divided opinions on the accuracy of its heritage tour portrayal, with some appreciating the sensitive handling of generational trauma and others arguing it subordinates and historical gravity to individual neuroses, rendering the backdrop insufficiently integrated. The film's trajectory further evidences positive word-of-mouth among viewers, as it expanded from a limited debut grossing $240,000 across four theaters (averaging $60,000 per screen) to a domestic total exceeding $8.3 million, with strong holdover weekends like a second-frame addition of $1.9 million signaling sustained despite from wider releases. This performance, impressive for an indie production with a modest , contrasts with initial critical acclaim by demonstrating viewer-driven longevity through personal recommendations rather than broad commercial appeal.

Accolades

A Real Pain garnered nominations and wins across prominent film awards in 2024 and 2025, particularly recognizing Jesse Eisenberg's screenplay and direction, as well as Kieran Culkin's supporting performance. At the , the film premiered in the U.S. Dramatic Competition and won the Award for Eisenberg. The film earned four nominations at the 82nd in 2025: Best Motion Picture – Musical or , Best Actor in a Motion Picture – Musical or for Eisenberg, Best Supporting Actor for Culkin (who won), and Best Screenplay (nominated but not won). Eisenberg won the Best Screenplay award at the 40th Film Independent Spirit Awards in 2025. For the 97th in 2025, the film received a nomination for Best Original for Eisenberg, which it won; Culkin generated supporting actor buzz but did not receive a nomination. Eisenberg also won the Outstanding British Film – Original at the 78th in 2025.
Award CeremonyCategoryRecipientResult
Sundance Film Festival (2024)Waldo Salt Screenwriting Award (U.S. Dramatic)Jesse EisenbergWon
Golden Globe Awards (2025)Best Supporting Actor – Motion PictureKieran CulkinWon
Film Independent Spirit Awards (2025)Best ScreenplayJesse EisenbergWon
Academy Awards (2025)Best Original ScreenplayJesse EisenbergWon
British Academy Film Awards (2025)Outstanding British Film – Original ScreenplayJesse EisenbergWon

Impact and Legacy

Cultural Resonance

A Real Pain has contributed to broader cultural conversations on the intergenerational transmission of Holocaust trauma and the efficacy of personal narratives in sustaining historical memory, particularly as audiences grapple with potential saturation from repeated depictions of genocide. Released amid a documented surge in antisemitic incidents— with the Anti-Defamation League recording 9,354 cases in 2024, a 5% increase from the prior year, and FBI data indicating anti-Jewish hate crimes constituted nearly 70% of all religion-based offenses— the film aligns with a wave of Jewish-themed cinema that scholars and critics interpret as a response to heightened global and domestic threats to Jewish communities. This contextual resonance is evident in 2024-2025 analyses linking such works to post-October 7, 2023, escalations in antisemitism, where films like A Real Pain prompt reflection on individual agency in preserving heritage rather than relying on institutional or collective retellings. The film ignites debates over "Holocaust fatigue," a term used by producers to describe audience desensitization to survivor testimonies and memorial content, versus the revitalizing potential of intimate, character-driven stories that foreground emotional immediacy over didactic history. Critics note that while some view the proliferation of -related media as risking diminished impact— with one producer stating audiences "get fatigue"— A Real Pain counters this by centering two cousins' discordant personal journeys through Poland's sites, emphasizing raw familial discord and reconciliation as mechanisms for engaging younger generations with inherited pain. This approach has been praised for injecting wry realism and humor into trauma narratives, avoiding over-reliance on spectacle and instead highlighting the causal links between unresolved grief and contemporary behavior. By prioritizing protagonists who actively confront their grandmother's legacy through banter, outbursts, and self-examination rather than passive commemoration, A Real Pain sidesteps conventional portrayals that critics associate with exaggerated victimhood, instead underscoring human agency in processing historical rupture. This stylistic choice resonates in discussions within Jewish intellectual circles, where the film's road-trip framework is seen as a microcosm of broader tensions in —balancing assimilation with vigilance amid rising threats—without devolving into sentimentality or moral grandstanding. Such framing has drawn commentary for its potential to foster causal realism in , prompting viewers to trace personal dysfunctions back to ancestral events while affirming individual resilience over deterministic suffering.

Influence on Filmmaking and Careers

The acquisition of A Real Pain by for $10 million following its premiere at the marked a commercial milestone for Jesse Eisenberg's sophomore directorial effort, enhancing his reputation beyond acting and playwriting by validating his ability to helm festival standouts with broad appeal. Eisenberg, who also wrote the screenplay, received an Academy Award nomination for Best Original Screenplay in 2025, reflecting how the film's tight, character-driven execution—refined from critiques of his 2022 debut When You Finish Saving the World—positioned him for future hybrid drama-comedy projects. Kieran Culkin's lead performance as the impulsive cousin Benji Kaplan served as a high-profile pivot from his Emmy-winning Succession role, garnering an Academy Award nomination for Best Supporting Actor and affirming his draw for nuanced, emotionally volatile characters in prestige indies. This recognition, building on pre-release buzz as a "career-best" turn, expanded Culkin's opportunities in post-television cinema, emphasizing directors' willingness to adapt meticulous preparation to his improvisational style during production. Produced independently via with a modest , A Real Pain exemplified the resilience of the Sundance acquisition model, where theatrical releases and awards viability persist despite streaming platforms' market share exceeding 40% of U.S. viewing by 2025, offering filmmakers a blueprint for securing seven-figure deals without major studio backing from . Its success underscores how targeted strategies can yield outsized returns for trauma-infused comedies, though no sequels or adaptations have materialized, with the 's road-trip and interpersonal dynamics cited in discussions of emerging indie hybrids blending historical gravity with wry humor.

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