Kieran Culkin won his Oscar from his first Oscar nomination for portraying Benjamin "Benji" Kaplan in A Real Pain.
A Real Pain tells the story of two cousins going to visit the homeland of their deceased grandmother in Poland.
Kieran Culkin recently won an Emmy for playing Roman Roy, a man who often says inappropriate things to cover up his deep rooted trauma in Succession. While Culkin here plays a man who often says inappropriate things to cover up his deep rooted trauma, but this time he's called Benji. The differences are slightly more in that Benji is decidedly poor (or perhaps just where Roman would be if he didn't have a rich father) and he's a bit less nefarious though still often caustic or creates conflict with his statements. Actor's have received praise and awards for similar roles before, and playing a similar role does not inherently mean a performance is bad or just coasting, if the actor finds a new way into a similar character or shows new range within the same type of character. I will bluntly say, I don't think Culkin does either of those things in this performance. In fact, he finds less in the role. This isn't to say he's exactly doing what he did as Roman, but it is very close. From the opening scenes where we see the uptight, responsible David (Jesse Eisenberg) contrasting against his cousin, Benji, Culkin comes in with his trademark, on or off screen, chaotic energy where he very much bounces around in his delivery that is nearly always slightly sarcastic and tends to have relaxed if not slightly random posture. We get all that, and to be fair, this is fitting enough for Benji to create the sense of a man who is eccentric, does things his own way, and very much differs from his much calmer cousin. However, except for saying less cruel things, or at least seeming to not mean them in some cases, Culkin's performance feels very much like he's hitting repeated beats without surprising variation to those beats. It feels just like Benji is a nicer Roman. Maybe unfair, but at the same time Culkin could've differentiated these performances more, but he doesn't.
We get kind of two types of scenes within Benji acting out as he does, which the film assumes are all very endearing no matter what. This comes into play when we see him with the tour they’re seeing Poland through, which including Holocaust related sites, including the tour guide James (Will Sharpe), an older Jewish woman Marcia (Jennifer Grey), a man who went through the Rwandan genocide Elgoe (Kurt Egyiawan), there’s also a married couple but they matter less than the already other underwritten characters. The first type of scene is where Benji acts out seemingly to get everyone involved or out of their shell. Which Culkin brings an energy to, such as assigning roles at a WWII monument for each of the people, and everyone thinks is amazing because it is written as such. I must admit, I don’t find Culkin quite has the specific endearing energy the film assumes he has here, seems kind of annoying at times, so everyone absolutely loving him without question feels contrived and part of it is Culkin doesn’t entirely sell it to me, despite certainly bringing a chaotic energy to the proceedings however seems more forceful than inviting. The other are moments where he attacks our guide for seeming not showing enough respect, which Culkin is less smiley in these moments, but other than looking slightly annoyed I will say there’s a lack of depth. These moments, I assume, are to show Benji acting out due to his especially hard to cover up the real trauma he’s going through by thinking about what his deceased grandmother went through, but Culkin’s frustration feels very much on the surface. I’ll say part of the reason for this feels so evident to me is that I’ve seen Culkin convey this very type of action covering emotion in Succession, so much more successfully, with so much more intensity in his eyes, sense of anxiety in every moment reflecting someone putting up their emotional defenses. Culkin in his earlier work found variations even in this notion where you really felt the sense of history as he acts up, here Culkin tries but it feels like he’s acting up in order for the scene to have Benji acting up rather than a natural expression of his character’s inner turmoil.
There is emotional turmoil in this performance but it feels like moments set aside for them. We open seeing him alone at the airport clearly depressed, where his expression is well performed by Culkin and convincing as such. When he talks about his grandmother we have a mini breakdown over her loss, again natural pain shown as the emotions surface in Culkin’s face. The same is true when they take the concentration camp part of their tour and it leaves Benji sobbing. The sobbing is all again very convincing as we see the man just writhing in anguish. But, unlike in Succession where those bigger emotional moments fueled other quieter or defensive moments, these moments feel isolated within the narrative and sadly I have to say within Culkin’s own performance. Because the emotion is so limited in the eccentric acting out scenes, these feel sometimes like emotions for the sake of them. The thing is each moment isn’t any kind of check point or arc within his overall work. They are moments for that moment, they don’t fuel how he is in the next few scenes or where Benji is going from there. The film wants us to believe all of this turns Benji for the better by the end when we see him thoughtful but happy in the same spot at the airport at the end of the film. Culkin portrays that expression convincingly just as he had the other, but I never felt I saw what truly created this change in the man from possibly suicidal to finding renewed life.
It all just happens and while it speaks to the weakness of the screenplay it also speaks to limitations of Culkin’s own performance that feels like autopilot more often than not. Not a bad autopilot, he’s good at the approach in a general sense but it never is especially inspired. Take the core relationship between David and Benji, where Culkin acts up a storm being eccentric while Eisenberg stays reserved most of the time. Okay, that dynamic is clear and obvious but does it feel like we truly sense the history between them? I would say not really, just get the basic gist, even when we lead to conflict it is basic notes of frustration between them, no sense of years of conflict or breaking apart or anything that truly would elevate it to feeling like we’ve come into these two at an essential crossroads. The whole grandmother element I think is fundamental in what is missing because the character is missing, yes in conception we don’t meet her, but we should meet her through Culkin’s performance, but we don’t. When Culkin talks about her, he’s sad sure, but you don’t get shades of tenderness, of guilt, of nostalgia, to really let us fundamentally feel the loss beyond a generalized sadness. Culkin isn’t bad, but much like the film, he’s aggressively fine. There’s nothing here that feels new in Culkin’s repertoire, and to be perfectly honest it feels like a lesser variation of his far greater work in Succession. In Succession Roman felt like a real person. Here while Culkin can convey real emotions, in the end Benji feels like a screenwriter’s creation only, who we’re told is charming, yet we don’t really sense that, we told he’s troubled but mostly we just see that he’s sad. Benji was clearly a role tailor made for Culkin, but maybe too much, because it all feels very safe and feeling safe makes Benji feel a little false.
