A Real Pain

⭐⭐⭐⭐

Jesse Eisenberg’s A Real Pain is a quiet triumph—an intimate film that lingers long after the credits roll. It is at once deeply personal and universally resonant, tackling themes of memory, grief, family, and identity with a sensitivity that feels lived-in rather than manufactured.

Eisenberg has often been a polarizing actor. His jittery mannerisms and anxious energy can, at times, be grating. Yet here, that quality becomes his strength. His performance feels perfectly suited to the story, capturing the uneasy restlessness of a man caught between obligation and self-doubt, belonging and alienation. It is a reminder that sometimes what we might find “annoying” in an actor is, in fact, exactly what a role requires.

The film’s real revelation, though, is Kieran Culkin. His performance is nothing short of extraordinary—magnetic, tender, and at times devastating. Culkin has rightfully won the Oscar for this role, and watching him here makes it easy to see why. He embodies a character who is simultaneously infuriating and heartbreaking, the kind of flawed, fully human presence that lifts the entire film onto another level.

Visually, the film is striking. The cinematography is attentive without being showy, capturing landscapes and interiors with a painterly eye. Many of the most powerful images are of people silhouetted against doorways or windows, the brightness of the outside world washing over them until they appear half-absent, as if they too are slipping between presence and absence. In those moments, the characters seem both grounded in their surroundings and strangely removed from them—mirroring the film’s exploration of disconnection, memory, and the sense of not entirely belonging. Chopin’s music threads through the film like a pulse, delicate and melancholy. The choice of Chopin isn’t incidental—it anchors the story in a specifically Polish cultural context while also evoking a sense of longing and loss. The music feels less like a soundtrack and more like the film’s unintentional core.

One of the most affecting sequences is the visit to a concentration camp. Eisenberg handles it with restraint and respect, avoiding melodrama while allowing the sheer weight of history to bear down on the characters. Their emotional collapse is raw, unpolished, and deeply relatable. As someone with Polish ancestry who also broke down during a visit years ago, the scene hit me with startling familiarity. It’s rare for a film to so accurately capture the disorienting mix of grief, guilt, pain and connection to the past that such a place evokes.

At one point, Eisenberg's character states quite plainly, “I know that my pain is unexceptional.” It’s a line that echoed long after it was spoken. So many of us move through life with that same belief—that our struggles don’t matter because everyone else is hurting too. We all have stuff. And yet, what this film suggests is that the problem isn’t that we each carry our pain quietly, but that we inhabit a world where such pain is normalized. Every grief, every anxiety, every fracture in identity may feel ordinary, but that does not make it less important. In recognizing and sharing it, we create connection—and resistance to the idea that suffering is just part of the fabric of life.

What makes A Real Pain so affecting is its refusal to tidy up the messiness of life. It shines a light on complex humanity—how we stumble through relationships with family and strangers alike, how mental health shadows even the brightest moments, how careers and ambitions clash with deeper needs for belonging and purpose. It’s a film about pain, yes, but also about the threads of connection that keep us moving forward.

This is not an easy film, nor is it a loud one. But in its honesty, it becomes profoundly moving. Eisenberg has created something that feels both timeless and immediate, a story of personal struggle set against the vast backdrop of history. With Culkin’s Oscar-winning performance at its centre, A Real Pain reminds us that while pain is real, so too is connection—and in that, there is a measure of hope.