A Real Pain

Jesse Eisenberg pulled the script out of Mongolia, a short story he wrote for the magazine Tablet in 2017. He was stuck on it until an advertisement for an Auschwitz tour with lunch included appeared on his screen. He offered Benji to Eric André first and was turned down. Kieran Culkin tried to pull out 2 weeks before shooting, and producer Emma Stone talked him into staying. The score is made entirely of Chopin piano pieces, played by Tzvi Erez. No original theme is laid over present day Poland to tell you what to feel. The camp sequence was filmed at Majdanek. It won the Waldo Salt Screenwriting Award at Sundance, after which Searchlight bought worldwide rights for 10 million dollars in an overnight auction. Against a 3 million dollar budget it took 24.9 million. Culkin collected the Oscar, BAFTA, Golden Globe, SAG and Critics’ Choice awards for supporting actor; Eisenberg won the BAFTA for original screenplay and was nominated for the Oscar in that category. Poland granted him citizenship in 2025. A good fit if you want a two hander boxed inside a coach tour, with the quarrel built on grief. Not for anyone unprepared for a sequence walking through gas chambers and ovens, or for scenes that discuss a suicide attempt openly.