You probably know someone like David: in his forties, he has a stable job (Internet advertising salesman), loves his wife and his little son. He takes medication but remains anxious, seems both very observant and perpetually distracted. Takes the responsibility of adulthood seriously. Very seriously. Maybe you are related to this person. Maybe you are that person.

And you definitely know someone like Benji: also in his early forties, but no one seems to have told him that he’s supposed to be all grown up by now. The kind of person who can’t help but speak his mind, who can’t help but radiate party vibes, who can’t help but be the cutest asshole in an 80 radius kilometers. Refuse to bow to all this corporate-sponsored propaganda about “success.” He knows his mother’s basement intimately. On the plus side, he knows where to get some truly premium weed in the Upstate.

They are the two archetypes – a duo with an ant and grasshopper dynamic that would make Aesop clap slowly – this writer-director-star Jesse Eisenberg presents us in A real pain, a road movie that strays just enough off the beaten path to stand out from a million other stories about mismatched traveling companions. Which is funny, given that most of this extraordinary, character-driven comedy-drama about reconciliation, history, the legacy of tragedy and that old chestnut that the past is never dead, etc., takes place on one of those group tours led by a guide and timed to the millisecond. David would appreciate the irony with a wry smile. Benji would just slap your arm and tell you to live more in the moment before sneaking onto the roof of a hotel and lighting a joint.

Unsurprisingly, it was David (Eisenberg) who booked this trip for him and Benji (Kieran Culkin). Once upon a time, these two cousins ​​were extremely close. Now David has his family and career in Brooklyn, and Benji is wandering through his life in Bennington, New York. The latter is particularly disturbed since the death of their grandmother Dory, since she was one of the few people he felt truly cared about him. So her cousin has organized a trip to Poland in her honor, which will take these two back to the grandmother’s homeland and end with a visit to the house where she grew up. This is the ideal opportunity for these somewhat distant loved ones to find some quality time together.

Time, of course, only exacerbated the differences between these two men, and once they joined the traveling group led by a British academic (The White Lotus‘ Will Sharpe) who never encountered a regional Jewish experience he didn’t like, the gap between the buttoned-up David and the problem-free kick-ass Benji becomes all the more pronounced. A real pain can serve as a de facto travelogue for a long-lost version of Poland, in which a world of pre-ghettoized Jewish neighborhoods was paved over but not forgotten, as well as a checklist of its tributes and markers of mass atrocities in the mid-20th century. But what it really focuses on is a much more personal story that was shaped not by a forcibly abandoned homeland, but rather in its shadow. Both cousins ​​find themselves connected to their roots in unexpected ways, even as they recognize an alternate history in which they both grew up in Poland (“where we have long beards and we can’t talk to women” ) which seems slightly unfathomable. It’s their connection to each other that now feels closer to ancient history, especially when it comes to processing the gravity of it all.

For David, this means a feeling of respectful detachment, which is to say his usual attitude. modus operandi. For Benji, well…let’s just say he is a lot. Eisenberg generously gave his co-star the kind of wild role most actors could only dream of, and Culkin rewards his director/teammate with the greatest, funniest, most comical, and most heartbreaking performance of his career – and yes, we count Roman Roy from Succession. His Benji is like a ball of pure, undiluted charisma, cheerfully inquiring about the lives of strangers and leading his fellow tourists on a photo shoot in front of the Warsaw Uprising monument. (David, naturally, is the one taking pictures on everyone’s phones.) This inner sunshine that emanates from him is what makes the occasional storm clouds of anger and the flurry of direct comments and indulgences that are forgivable, if not entirely acceptable. The actor plays him as both an unfiltered holy fool and an adorable puppy who pees on the carpet. “I love him, I hate him, I want to kill him, I want to be him,” Eisenberg’s character says at one point, and thanks to Culkin, you completely understand each of these impulses.

Culkin’s Zen-stoner embraces a free spirit that’s also a broken spirit – an accidentally leaked piece of information hinting at a story that suggests the film’s title is deserved – would be enough to recommend it. But Eisenberg’s second time behind the camera also crowns him as a true filmmaker. His first film, When you’re done saving the world (2022), felt like the work of someone carefully making their way through an art form. This second effort as a writer-director is proof that someone has an eye, an ear and a voice. It feels like you’re moving the camera just enough to emphasize a detail and framing a sequence in a way that suggests taking advantage of a backdrop, symmetry, and/or space without seeming show-off. That his work directing the entire film, which also includes Jennifer Gray, Dragon Houseby Kurt Egyiawan, David Oreskes and Liza Sadovy, complements the film’s half-breezy, half-heavy tone is no shock. That Eisenberg would be wise enough to abruptly end a sequence at the Majdanek concentration camp with a sudden gasp, then end with silent sobs, is anything but expected.

A real pain ends on the same shot it begins on, with a wanderer in an airport, lost in thought as the world moves around him. The second time is just as enigmatic as the first, and yet we now know these two cousins ​​so well – and have heard their arguments and accusations, seen how incompatible they are, seen how much they love each other. for the other cannot bridge the gulf between them. their life choices – that what we read in this look is enormous. These two just traveled hundreds of miles together, but healing can only be measured in inches. What Eisenberg overall accomplishes here, however, is beyond measure. This is the real deal.