After the death of their grandmother, a Holocaust victim, David (Jesse Eisenberg) and his cousin, Benji (Kieran Culkin), travel to Poland to tour the Holocaust-related sites and to visit the apartment that their grandmother had lived at in A Real Pain. The screenplay by writer/director Jesse Eisenberg is a witty, funny and tender emotional journey. Eisenberg understands the concept that the root of comedy can often be found in tragedy. He keeps the story lean by beginning at the airport after David and Benji's grandmother died. There are no flashbacks to their experiences with her, but during a dinner with others in the tour group, a lot gets revealed about how Benji was closer to his grandmother than David was and how blunt she was. Based on the way that they describe her, she seems like kindred spirits with Maude from Harold & Maude. He also confides in them something very personal regarding Benji's suicide attempt. It's a brief scene and a moving one, but underdeveloped as if Eisenberg were scared to allow the film to get too dark and unflinching. The evolving dynamics between David and Benji throughout the tour feels true-to-life, though, especially when they banter. Kudos to Eisenberg for providing them with different personalities. Benji comes across as an annoying, rude jerk as well as a bad influence initially, but there's more to him than meets the eye. He even has no shame in criticizing the tour guide, James (Will Sharpe).

      To be fair, much of the dialogue is on-the-nose and lacks subtlety. However, it never becomes maudlin or cheesy. Jennifer Grey has a supporting role as Marcia, one of the tour group members. Her character, though, just like everyone besides David and Benji, are underwritten and forgettable. Compared to Treasure, which has a similar plot, A Real Pain is much more captivating and heartfelt. In a double feature, it would be the A-movie while Treasure would be the vastly inferior B-movie. Also, Eiseberg deserves to be commended for keeping the running time at 90 minutes which means that he grasps the concept of restraint and that less is more. A Real Pain opens in select theaters via Searchlight Pictures.

 

        Youth (Hard Times) is the second part of the Youth trilogy after Youth (Spring). Director Wang Bing focuses his attention on young workers at textiles workshops in the province of Zhili, China. Once again, he opts for a laissez-faire, fly-on-the-wall approach sans talking-head interviews or expositional texts. The texts that do appear on the screen are the names of the workers, their age and which province they're from. If you're hoping to get to know any of them beyond their workplace, you'll be disappointed. What the film effectively sheds light on, though, is the sleaziness of the textile company that hired these young people who clearly work very hard. They dehumanize their own workers and, in some cases, neglect to pay them or just come up with excuses not to pay them. So, in a way, this is a human rights documentary although not one that's very enraging or provocative. Why don't they go on strike or at least form a union? By unflinchingly showing the workers' frustrations, the film allows the audience to empathize with them. Youth (Hard Times) isn't a documentary for audiences with a short attention span who lack patience because it does clock almost to the 4-hour mark and move at a snail's pace occasionally, so it requires a lot of patience. Patient audiences will be rewarded the most. At a running time of 3 hours and 46 minutes, it opens at Metrograph via Icarus Films.

Number of times I checked my watch: 4