Uncertain Endings

I first watched the Bicycle Thief with my husband shortly after we got married.  I found it stressful, heartbreaking, and the ending infuriated me.  My fury frustrated my husband, who has no problem with stories that lack a neat, happily ever after.  I need the closure.

I have seen a lot of great movies at the behest of my husband.  I had never seen Some Like It Hot,  Blade Runner, Dr. Strangelove, Walkabout, The Godfather (I & II), A Clockwork Orange, Maltese Falcon, and so on until we got together.  So, he's introduced me to a ton of great movies.

I bring less to the table, in terms, of great cinematic knowledge.  I bring a lot to the table in other ways, but as movies go, I tend to like commercially viable things that have a predictable beginning, middle, and end.  I love "classics" - comedies - like Airplane, Animal House, Coming to America, Trading Places.  I mean, I like the other things too - it's just that given a list, I'm going to go for basic over fancy.

So, when I saw the previews for Jesse Eisenberg's A Real Pain - well, it struck me as, maybe not the kind of thing I'd pick normally, but I genuinely like him.  He was on a short-lived TV dramedy called Get Real back in the late 90s.  His TV sister was Anne Hathaway.  My mother and I loved the show, but knew it was too good to survive network TV in the late 90s.  We were right.  See also:  Nothing Sacred - but that's for another time.

Anyway, I thought he was cute as heck in Zombieland, never saw Social Network.

Not long after I saw the preview for A Real Pain, I heard Eisenberg on Fresh Air with Terry Gross, and I really liked their interview, so I mentioned to Matt I'd like to take a look at it - we have it on Hulu.  And last night, we went ahead and watched it.

I really, really liked it.  

First of all, it's small.  Ninety minutes, in and out.  There are a handful of actors in it.  Three you actually know of - Eisenberg, Kieran Culkin, and Jennifer Grey.  The rest of the main cast are great character actors - but it's a small cast.  And it's really about Eisenberg and Culkin - a pair of cousins fulfilling a final wish of their late grandmother by taking a heritage tour in Poland.   They are Jewish, at least culturally - and their tourmates have a variety of backgrounds - all compelling.  The cousins are clearly devoted to each other, and they both come with baggage - not just the vacation time.  David (Eisenberg) has OCD, and Benji (Culkin) is depressed, having a recent, failed suicide attempt.  There's a lot to unpack, but it's a short trip - which is an apt metaphor for their whirlwind, completely over-programmed days in Warsaw and Lublin.

One of the disconnects in the movie centers around the luxurious lodgings, meals, and transit the group uses to tour the bleak, spare history of their ancestors.  Benji calls it out, often, David works anxiously to keep Benji calm.  There is a lot of love, a lot of history, and a lot of pain between them.

And they manage to pick at those scabs just in time to head home, and back to their separate lives.  It's a sweet story, but it's not the whole story.  It's a slice out of a much bigger, richer cake.  You don't get the complete picture of either of their lives, but you get enough shorthand to know that there's a lot there, and it's probably interesting.

It ends as it starts, with people meeting and separating at a busy airport.  It's not any more settled than it was before Poland.  It's just another chapter in a book that will keep being written.

And in spite of that, I loved it.  I understood both men really well.  Having been depressed like Benji and anxious like David, I thought the acting was entirely believable.  I believed them as cousins, and their relationship felt fraught, loving, and real.

Having lost a loved one recently, I appreciated their portrayals of grief, and how different it is from person to person.  I appreciated the ways that religion unites and divides us.  And what we believe about ourselves and what we believe about others see in us.

Matt thought the score was too invasive (fair enough) and he thought it was fine.  Which is a valid opinion.

I really liked it.  I am sure that there's a lot going on in my life that contributes to that, but I thought it was really a good, small little movie with heart, and something to say.

So, if you're on the fence, I say give it a watch.  It's no Adventures in Babysitting, but what is?

ae