Spoilers below.
Tyler: Norman, let’s get to it! Jesse Eisenberg has rebooted Garden State and set it in Poland. I know I’ve got some thoughts on the matter. Did you have any expectations going in?
Norman: None. I knew literally nothing other than that it was Jesse directing (that’s interesting!) and about brothers (?) going to Poland for something something. My preferred way to see a movie is completely blind. No expectations at all. And now it’s getting…Oscar buzz or something.
Tyler: Sure is!
Norman: I’m quite surprised by that, though not over Kieran Culkin’s performance, which is masterfully annoying.
Tyler: I was annoyed by most of what I experienced.
Norman: My source of annoyance was mostly the character. When it finished, I said to myself, “Wow, I don’t think I’ve spent 90 minutes at the theater, the whole time with a desire to punch a character straight in the face before.”
Tyler: It’s a bad movie. This movie is bad.
Norman: Do tell!
Tyler: As a mismatched-cousins narrative, it’s barely passable. Oh dear, one of them is an ostensible success and the other is a wounded devil-may-care roustabout. Huzzah for antics! Eisenberg’s wavering monologue about the characters’ relationship is presented as a kind of breakthrough moment for the character, on the heels of an outburst from Culkin, whose volatile character you detest so much. It’s all so very overblown, though, the stuff of prototypical family histrionics. So, no good there.
I forgot to mention that this entire familial melodrama plays out on a tour of Poland that culminates in a trip to, including footage of, a Nazi death camp.
What??
Norman: Here’s what I liked.
Watching that insufferable character reminded me of a younger self, probably late high school, maybe early college. Someone who is so convinced of their own profundity that they have no ability to read the room and act in ways that might be respectful and considerate. The tension in the tour guide scenes was so horrifyingly funny to me, because I saw myself.
But the movie took me to a place that I could not understand: everyone in the group falling in love with this asshole.
Tyler: There is the older gentleman present with his wife. He isn’t suffering any of Culkin’s tomfoolery.
Norman: Yes, I forgot about them. Sorry, I haven’t seen it in two months. I stand corrected. But, I maintain that broader group’s love of him is pure balderdash. I almost puked when the tour guide gave him a mea culpa.
Tyler: Why is this movie even set in Poland?
Norman: Is it in any way autobiographical?
That was my guess, but I haven’t bothered to confirm the suspicion. I just thought, “Eisenberg is Jewish, this is supposed to be like a cool modern exploration on Jewish diaspora/Holocaust.”
Tyler: I don’t think it matters, really. Within the confines of the picture, I saw no reason for this story involving these two main characters to take place where it does. Holocaust awareness is essential, but in A Real Pain references to the horrors feel shoehorned and unearned.
Norman: We may be approaching it a little differently. I saw it as a take on banality in the face of serious history. I mean, Auschwitz has had problems with people going there to, you know, take pictures on their damn cell phones.
Tyler: I think it takes the banality very seriously. Not for nothing do things end with Culkin cryptically settling into an airport terminal. Why didn’t he go with his cousin to have a nice family dinner? Is he homeless? Eisenberg wants us to ask these questions.
I just didn’t buy it. None of it. I know I’m being especially harsh here, but I spent most of the movie tensed up, annoyed, often angry.
Norman: Yes! And maybe (rethinking it a bit on the fly) that’s why Eisenberg allows the tour group to like Culkin in the end. They crave the banality he offers.
There’s a tension to this movie that I can’t quite shake.
Tyler: Between the history and the characters?
Norman: Yes. You go on a pilgrimage to see your Holocaust survivor grandmother’s house and you can’t get in. And there’s no sense that you leave the experience changed in any way. I don’t have a parallel history as big/meaningful as this one, but I do struggle to make sense of my own history, especially as it recedes further and further away.
How can you really encounter meaningful history on a tour group? How can you encounter meaningful history at all?
Tyler: Well, through film, I would hope, but even history through cinema is curated. Perhaps Eisenberg and Culkin’s characters had the right idea, breaking away from the tour group to pursue a connection more direct. Even if, as you note and I’d agree, they don’t appear particularly altered by what they’ve done, who they’ve met, where they’ve been.
Norman: But I think that “being unaltered” is true to life. I went to Japan in 2023 to visit a friend. It was fascinating, gave me some new perspectives, and wonderful memories. I don’t know if I’ve changed in any meaningful way.
Tyler: Did you visit Hiroshima? Honest question.
Norman: Wanted to. Didn’t have the time. But even being that close to it felt strange.
Tyler: I ask because—while I’m with you on travel leaving you rewarded, if not altered—an American in Japan isn’t having quite the same cultural or religious experience as two Jewish men visiting a Nazi camp. No disrespect, does that make sense?
Norman: No, I certainly don’t mean to suggest that the two are equal, but I do want to make the point that these kinds of experiences – where we get out of our own selves, visit new worlds, encounter histories and cultures that we aren’t totally familiar with – are not necessarily revelatory.
If you are these guys, you know about the Holocaust. You know the story of your grandma. Going there doesn’t change the story drastically and it doesn’t necessarily mean that you’re going to make radical life changes in the wake.
Tyler: In the end, it feels like the life change Culkin really wants is to hang out with his cousin more. But his cousin is busy!
Norman: I think that is good irony. Eisenberg paints his character as the more conventionally mature, but also the one who isn’t really going to do right by his annoying as fuck cousin.
Tyler: Have we done right, then, by A Real Pain?
Norman: Yeah. It’s nice to disagree a bit. I see the movie as a slight, but fascinating exploration of all topics mentioned above. You seem to view it as a misplaced exercise in banality itself!
There are good performances, though. I don’t know what Culkin is like in real life, but after seeing this movie, I’d walk to the other side of the street to avoid him.
Tyler: He’s big these days, what with Succession. To me, he’ll always with fondness be the title character from Igby Goes Down.
Norman: I’ll say this. If I ever take a trip to Poland, I’ll think of this movie. Maybe that’s not for the best, but it made an impression.
Tyler: Surprise! I bought us tickets to Warsaw!
Norman: Oh shit! Uh, can you bring some weed too?
Tyler: That’s the only way we’ll find detente! Didn’t you see A Real Pain?
Writers' Loom 