Everyone has someone in their life they oscillate wildly back and forth on whether they love or hate them. That person’s their complete opposite, but someone they’re inextricably connected to because, in some perverse way, they complete one another. The strengths of one are the weaknesses of the other and vice versa — and they’ll be there for each other no matter what.
In A Real Pain, cousins David and Benji Kaplan (Jesse Eisenberg and Kieran Culkin, respectively) grew up as close as brothers and fit this archetype to a T. In the wake of their grandmother’s death, they travel to Poland, the old country, to see where she grew up and experience the culture she left behind after surviving the Holocaust.
David is exactly the kind of character most people picture when thinking of Jesse Eisenberg. He’s anxious. He leaves too many voicemails. When given the chance to partake in a spontaneous moment of fun, he’s the guy reluctantly taking photos for everyone else. Benji, in contrast, is a being of nearly pure id. He says exactly what he thinks and feels at all times, and he feels all of his feelings deeply. He walks into a room and lights it up, like when he convinces the group to strike a pose at a war monument in a moment of spontaneous fun. But when the room is a china shop, he’s the proverbial bull.
Link: https://exclaim.ca/film/article/a-real-pain-film-review
