You probably know someone like David: he’s in his early 40s, has a steady job (selling ads on the Internet), loves his wife and young son. He is on medication but is still filled with anxiety, somehow seems very observant and perpetually distracted. The responsibility of adulthood is taken seriously. Very oh really. Maybe you are related to that person. Maybe you are that person.

And you almost certainly know someone like Benji: he’s also in his early 40s, but no one seems to have told him that he’s supposed to be all grown up by now. The kind of guy who can’t help but say what’s on his mind, can’t help but radiate party life vibes, can’t help but be the most lovable motherfucker in a 50 mile radius. He refuses to bow down to all that corporate-sponsored propaganda about “success.” He is intimately familiar with his mother’s basement. Good thing he knows where to get top quality weed upstate.

These are the two archetypes (a duo with an ant-grasshopper dynamic that would make Aesop slowly clap his hands) that writer, director and star. Jesse Eisenberg presents us in a real pain, a road movie that strays far enough off the beaten path to distinguish itself from a million other mismatched travel companion stories. Which is funny, since most of this extraordinary character-driven comedy-drama about reconciliation, history, the legacy of tragedy and that old saying that the past never dies, etc., takes place in one of those group tours guided by a guide and programmed to the millisecond. David would appreciate the irony with a wry smile. Benji would just punch you in the arm and tell you to live more in the moment before sneaking onto the roof of a hotel and lighting up a joint.

It’s no surprise that it’s David (Eisenberg) who booked this trip for him and Benji (kieran culkin). Once upon a time, these two cousins ​​were very close. Now, David has his family and career in Brooklyn, and Benji just wanders through life in Bennington, New York. The latter has been especially unleashed since his grandmother Dory passed away, as she was one of the few people he felt truly cared for him. So her cousin organized a trip to Poland to honor her, which will take them back to the nana’s native country and culminate with a visit to the house where she grew up. It’s the perfect opportunity for these somewhat estranged relatives to spend some quality time together again.

Time, of course, has only exacerbated the differences between these two men, and once they join the touring group led by a British scholar (The white lotus‘ Will Sharpe), who never met a footnote of regional Jewish experience he didn’t love, the gap between the buttoned-down David and the no-big-deal Benji becomes much more pronounced. A real pain can function as a de facto travelogue for a long-lost version of Poland, one in which a world of pre-ghettoized Jewish neighborhoods has been paved over but not forgotten, as well as a list of its tributes and markers of a mass atrocity in mid-20th century. But what it really focuses on is a much more personal story that has not been shaped by a Homeland forcibly abandoned, but rather overshadowed by it. Both cousins ​​connect with their roots in unexpected ways, even as they acknowledge an alternate history of both growing up in Poland (“where we have long beards and can’t talk to women”) that seems a little unfathomable. It’s their connection to each other that feels more like ancient history to them now, especially when it comes to processing the gravity of it all.

For David, that means a respectful sense of detachment, that is, his usual modus operandi. For Benji, well…let’s just say He is a lot. Eisenberg has generously gifted his co-star the kind of furious role most actors could only dream of, and Culkin rewards his director/co-star with the best, funniest, most comedic, heartbreaking performance of his career, and yes, we are counting Roman Roy from Succession. His Benji is like a ball of pure, pure charisma, happily asking about the lives of strangers and guiding his fellow tourists on a photo shoot in front of the Warsaw Uprising Monument. (David, naturally, is the one left taking pictures on everyone’s phones.) That inner glow that emanates from him is what makes the occasional storm clouds of anger and flurry of blunt, blunt comments forgivable, if not entirely acceptable. The actor plays him partly as an unfiltered holy fool and partly as 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 those impulses.

Culkin’s Zen-stoner version of a free spirit who is also a broken spirit (a bit of accidentally spilled information hints at a backstory that suggests the film’s title was earned) would be enough to recommend this. But Eisenberg’s second time behind the camera also crowns him as a true filmmaker. His first film, When you finish saving the world (2022), felt like the work of someone cautiously exploring an art form. This second effort as a writer and director is evidence of someone with an eye, ear and voice. There’s a sense of moving the camera just enough to emphasize a detail and frame a sequence in a way that suggests taking advantage of a background, symmetry, and/or space without seeming presumptuous. That his work directing the film’s cast, which also includes Jennifer Gray, Dragon Houseby Kurt Egyiawan, David Oreskes and Liza Sadovy, complements the film’s half-happy, half-heavy tone – no surprise there. That Eisenberg is smart enough to abruptly end a sequence at the Majdanek concentration camp with a sudden gasp, and then cut it to a silent sobbing ending, is anything but expected.

A real pain It ends in the same shot as it begins, with a homeless man in an airport, lost in thought as the world moves around him. The second time is as enigmatic as the first and yet we now know these two cousins ​​very well and we have heard their arguments and accusations, we have seen how incompatible they are, we have witnessed how their love for each other cannot close the chasm. between them. their life choices: that what we read in that look is enormous. These two just traveled hundreds of miles together, but the healing can only be recorded in inches. However, what Eisenberg achieves overall here is beyond measure. It’s the real deal.