A Real Pain is a perfect example of an independent movie.

For me, an independent movie does not have a plot, or at least one that drives most of the story. It is a film where we take some characters and drop them into situations and let them see what happens. You could define it as character based films. I don’t want to imply that I do not like that style of movie, but it is distinct.

In A Real Pain, two cousins take a trip to Poland after their beloved grandma passed away to go on a Holocaust tour and visit her childhood home.

The movie was written and directed by Jesse Eisenberg, who starred as David Kaplan. Kieran Culkin played his cousin Benji Kaplan. They both brought Oscar-worthy performances in these roles. Their performances were very important since the characters were so important to the story.

The tour of Poland and a nearby concentration camp was very powerful and the actors did a great job responding to it.

The film was only 90 minutes long, but it did feel longer than that. That is probably because of the dense material that the film featured. However, there were some really funny moments too, which you do not find too often with Holocaust films. A Real Pain is an ambitious film with great performances that had some challenging moments to watch it.

4 stars