Why 'A Real Pain' Must Win Best Original Screenplay

Jesse Eisenberg, the celebrated movie star, ventures into the world of screenwriting and directing with 2024’s A Real Pain. Few freshman screenplays have sparked such excitement and praise, so let’s dive in to explore what makes it so special.

As someone who reads a lot of screenplays, I notice a common thread: melodrama. Murder, adultery, love triangles, the apocalypse - you name it. These high-stakes elements pop up constantly.  If you subscribe to the screenwriting gurus and their countless  books, blogs, or podcasts, you’ve probably been encouraged to lean into those emotive elements. Today I want to underscore the brilliance of subtlety and why a meandering, low-stake screenplay can be even more accomplished.

OPENING IMAGE

The screenplay opens in a very succinct manner - introducing us to one of our two leads, Benji, as he waits in an airport lounge. We are fed credits, a musical motif, and the title. 

Immediately, we question who Benji is, where he’s going, how long he’s been waiting here - as well as establishing that he’s got a complex interior life tinged with melancholy. 

SET UP

In contrast, cousin David is an anxious mess as he rushes through busy New York City to try and reach JFK three hours before take off. He bombards Benji with messages, wavering between doubting his cousin’s punctuality and fearing he might not show up at all.

David is surprised to find Benji has already checked in and is enjoying the company of strangers. He’s touched that Benji picked him up a pre-flight snack, but that sentiment quickly shifts to alarm when Benji casually reveals plans to smuggle marijuana into Poland.

We discover that the cousins are Jewish and traveling to the birthplace of their recently deceased grandmother - a pilgrimage of sorts. Vitally, we establish the dichotomy of their personalities through subtleties in their approach to life;  David’s uptight, anxious demeanor versus Benji’s ingenuous charm and knack for always landing on his feet.

An unspoken barrier exists between them, a tension that feels impossible to articulate. This sets up Benji’s unwillingness to discuss ‘the last few months’, a rule that quietly shapes the script.

Benji’s selfish streak surfaces when he insists David take the cramped middle seat without offering a reason or compromise. When David asks if Benji’s job hunting, Benji deflects and critiques David’s career in pop-up advertising instead.

David is surprised when Benji reprimands him for talking over the flight attendant’s safety demonstration, which he considers rude. David pops prescription pills while Benji drinks wine. 

David illustrates that he’s already missing home by watching a video of his son Abe, who has a fixation with skyscrapers and their floor count. 

INCITING INCIDENT

A Real Pain skips a traditional inciting incident, instead starting with the momentum of a narrative device already in play - their grandmother’s death. The story opens as the characters are already immersed in their odyssey into an unfamiliar world.

Instead, I’m going to define the inciting incident as the four sentence scene on page 10-11, where they pass through Polish customs. David believes Benji to have marijuana in his possession and their decision to go through Nothing to Declare epitomises their relationship - Benji is direct, unapologetic, feels it better to ask for forgiveness than permission - while David is uptight and fears the worst. 

DEBATE

Benji directly asks if he can watch David’s video of Abe. He tears up and we get the sense that the solitary cousin has a longing for a familial connection like David shares with his wife and son. 

They check in to their hotel, where a package of weed has been delivered for Benji. David realizes he was mistaken in thinking David smuggled it himself. This allows him to relax a little and subtly unveils their internal mechanics to one another. 

Benji compares David to their grandmother, both mourning her and admiring David. He asks to take the first shower - running down their tight half hour window before they’re due to meet the tour group. He takes so long that David doesn’t get a chance to shower, and they end up running late.

In the lobby, they meet James, the British tour guide, and the rest of the group. James is an Eastern European studies scholar from Oxford and invites everyone to introduce themselves. We meet Marcia, a recently divorced sixty-something from Brooklyn whose mother survived a concentration camp, followed by Mark and Diane, a couple, and Eloge, a Rwandan Jewish convert.

Benji’s enthusiasm toward Eloge’s tragic past makes David deeply uncomfortable, who feels his cousin is reducing history to a quaint anecdote. As an introvert, David could never imagine passing a comment such as this. Benji exists as a perfect trigger for anyone with social anxiety, his every action breeding discomfort. 

Benji starts performing for the group, altering his speech and trying to charm everyone, which only alienates David. He makes inappropriate jokes along the way, and David feels partially responsible for them.

But the group is enamoured by Benji’s genuinity, vulgar as it may be. The cousins reveal their plan to cut the tour short to visit the home their grandmother once inhabited - and that she left money in her will for them to accomplish this. 

Breaking with a traditional story structure once again, this isn’t a ‘should we, shouldn’t we’ sort of story - by the time the debate rolls around we’re already firmly established in Poland. It’s more of a question of can these two people get along and maybe more so do they want to? 

BREAK INTO TWO

So, we’ve reached the end of Act One and the table has been laid. As mentioned up top, the stakes are extremely low. David and Benji are assessing one another, there’s some unspoken truths between them, and David feels increasingly embarrassed by Benji’s lack of social tact. 

As the group embarks on their walking tour of Warsaw, the heavy past of the Holocaust looms over them - but the screenplay is less concerned with the horrific tragedy of the past and more with microcosms of discomfort of the present. With emotive moments and painful memories on the horizon, we fear what Benji’s intensity and sensitivity could mean for David. 

FUN AND GAMES

Exploring Warsaw’s somber history doesn’t exactly lend itself to the ‘fun’ in fun and games. Benji starts to wonder how different their lives might have been if not for the Holocaust. He quickly abandons David, gravitating toward Marcia and forming a new connection with her.

Benji fluctuates between immersing himself in the tour with intense focus and playing the reluctant child being dragged along. When Benji suggests taking a photo with the Warsaw Uprising Monument, David feels it inappropriate. But the rest of the group supports Benji, and they all join in for the photo.

This scene is both hilarious and insightful—it spans six pages (about 6% of the screenplay) and has minimal plot impact. Yet, it does a fantastic job of building character. Benji and David take opposing sides, each trying to sway the group. Without fail, everyone gravitates toward Benji, drawn to his childlike enjoyment, even if it seems disrespectful to an outsider. This leaves David feeling isolated, wondering if he might be the titular "Real Pain" of the story, rather than Benji.

At the end of the first day, Benji brings David to smoke with him as a thanks for ‘putting up’ with him even though he knows David isn’t ‘the most comfortable person with groups and people and social shit like that.’ They break onto the hotel rooftop terrace, taking in the view of the city as they unwind.

David finds Benji passed out from a night of heavy drinking, courtesy of the mini bar - something we’ll circle back to later. On the second day, the group boards a train through the Polish countryside toward Lublin, where Benji voices his objection to their first-class tickets.

When David doesn’t share his opinion, Benji voices it to the group, interrupting James. For the first time, Benji faces a negative reaction - Mark snaps back when Benji suggests that the tour group is privileged and apathetic.

David apologizes to James and follows Benji into another carriage, where Benji expresses gratitude for the company. David soon falls asleep, and when he wakes, they’ve already passed Lublin and need to double back. David is furious that Benji let him sleep, and his frustration grows when Benji suggests they make the return trip without a ticket - once again pulling David into his schemes.

MIDPOINT

The duo dodge the ticket inspector and guess where they find themselves? 

They’re reunited with the irritated tour group, apologizing for the delay. 

BAD TO WORSE

Despite the meandering and comedic awkwardness of the second act thus far, the temperature is slowly turned up as a result of the midpoint. This isn’t a grand inversion of the narrative, as the Hero’s Journey or Save the Cat might dictate - it’s a steady progression. Experiences that might bring the cousins closer actually drive a wedge between them. Things that were once aggravating are now endearing. The plot ambles along, but the characters unfold in a realistic and unexpected manner. 

As the group explore Lublin, Benji and Eloge share their ponderings on grief, something which David cannot understand. He begins to feel like the group are ganging up on him - but this is his nature - to feel quietly and internally. 

James guides the group through various locations, focusing on Lublin’s evolution as a developing urban center with a rich pre-war history and a promising future ahead. He’s careful to portray the city not as an eternal cemetery, but as a living, breathing place with its own story to tell.

As they visit each new landmark, Benji grows increasingly frustrated with James’ rapid-fire delivery of facts and figures. He urges the group to slow down and experience the places more deeply, rather than just absorbing information. Benji criticizes James for being an outsider, disconnected from the true emotional weight of the places they’re visiting.

The group visits a restaurant and shares stories. David recounts an anecdote about their grandmother.

Benji takes offence, having lived in his mother’s basement. This draws the genuinity of his relationship with their grandmother into question - the person he was perhaps closest to in the world thought less of him than he’d have figured. 

When Benji leaves, David doubles down, rallying off his own problems. 

David reveals that Benji attempted suicide by overdosing six months earlier - the unspoken truth that’s been hanging over them. He doesn’t feel guilty for sharing this, but rather as though a weight has been lifted. It’s as if he’s finally made clear that Benji’s pain isn’t some romanticized, tortured-soul kind of suffering - it’s real, raw, and terrifying.

Let’s revisit the moment when David finds Benji face down on his bed. With the context of Benji’s previous suicide attempt, this scene takes on a new, harrowing weight. David is likely gripped with fear, wondering if he’s woken up to find that Benji has succeeded this time.

BREAK INTO THREE

Benji doesn’t return to the hotel, leaving David to sleep restlessly, consumed by worry over how his slip of the tongue might have affected his cousin. The following morning, David snaps at Benji for scaring him the way he did.

James leads them to Majdanek, a concentration camp just two miles from Lublin’s town square. We enter the final act with concerns for the cousins - for how the experience will affect Benji and his mental health, and for how David will react to further aggravations. 

FINALE

James gives them a tour, learning from Benji’s criticism the day prior and letting the history of the location speak for itself. An eerily quiet montage leads us from the barracks to the gas chambers. The sequence is raw and painful, capturing the weight of the place - it reads powerfully on the page and translates even more effectively on screen.

The group return to the hotel to mourn together and bid farewell to the cousins, who leave to visit their grandmother’s home. Everyone bids a touching farewell to Benji, including James.

It’s a complex feeling for David, who can see that Benji has touched the lives of the people around him in a way he could never accomplish - and Benji doesn’t even realise it. 

In the film, James simply says ‘Goodbye David’ after his heart to heart with Benji, further compounding David’s feelings of introversion - like he meant nothing at all to these people. I love the depth of this addition, which ties back to Benji’s capability to connect to people and really speaks to David’s experience as an introvert. He has a fundamental flaw in connecting with others. 

The cousins share the last joint on a rooftop. David asks Benji what his plans are when they return to the US, but Benji’s response is vague, as if his future remains uncertain.

Both cousins seem to believe the other is facing a dead end - Benji without tangible plans for the future, and David resigned to returning to his daily grind. 

Hard truths begin to flow quickly, blending into one another as their conversation shifts unpredictably. David admits his envy of Benji’s unapologetic nature, something he feels he can never fully embrace himself.

The duo find their grandmother’s home and are struck by how unexceptional it is. Benji recalls how she slapped him in public once, a memory he seems to remember fondly. They leave a stone on the door stoop in her memory, but have to remove it when the homeowner complains. 

On their return to New York, there is no resolution or grand conclusion to their issues. They don’t discuss their tensions further or attempt to resolve anything. Instead, they find comfort in simply letting it go, leaving everything laid bare without the need for closure.

At JFK, Benji considers but refuses David’s offer to join his family for dinner. 

David slaps Benji, thinking it will put him right - just like when their Grandma slapped him. It doesn’t - because Benji has a flat character arc. Despite everything that has transpired, his emotional barometer hardly shifts. He returns to his stasis, the kind of person you worry about but never quite reach out to.

David returns to his wife and child, and his life seems outwardly peaceful. However, there’s a subtle sense that he’s been fundamentally changed. The trip, his interactions with Benji, and the unresolved tension have left an impression on him, shaping him in ways that aren’t immediately visible but are likely to surface over time. David’s conclusion mirrors the essence of the screenplay itself - its impact becomes more pronounced in the weeks that follow.

CLOSING IMAGE

The closing image directly mirrors the opening image, solidifying Benji as an unwavering character. This is exacerbated by the repetition of one of his first lines with one of his last; You meet the craziest people. 

WHY IT’S GREAT

It’s clear that Eisenberg’s writing is a masterclass in subtlety and precision. He achieves so much in such a compact, dialogue-heavy screenplay, effortlessly blending introspection with humor. Despite the morbid backdrop, he fills the narrative with situational comedy and a pervasive sense of secondhand awkwardness. What’s especially remarkable is how he manages to weave in a poignant message, all while maintaining a natural flow. Every moment feels thoughtfully crafted, yet never forced - everything flows organically, making the film feel both calculated and effortless at the same time.

Eisenberg skillfully avoids the potential pitfalls that could easily push the narrative into satire or rely too heavily on pathos-comedy. By keeping David as our primary point of view, he ensures the story stays grounded. Rather than opting for easy, palatable solutions to the characters’ issues, Eisenberg allows them to remain complex and multifaceted, lending them a genuine humanity. While themes like the Jewish experience, generational divides, mental health, and work/life balance could easily take center stage, they remain subtle, secondary elements. This keeps the focus squarely on the core relationship between the cousins, making the narrative feel intimate and focused without overwhelming the audience with thematic clutter.

This restraint is undoubtedly the greatest strength of A Real Pain. The screenplay succeeds in being a comedy about the depth of people’s pain - an incredible achievement. The complexity of Benji’s pain is terrifically illustrated. He calls people out for not acknowledging and feeling their pain, but he does too much - feels it so deeply it gives him suicidal tendencies. It’s a delicate, powerful portrayal of emotional struggle.

As touched upon in the introduction - in a world where melodramatic blockbusters lose tens of millions - Eisenberg’s restrained, focused screenplay is a testament to the power of simplicity. It’s a valuable lesson for screenwriters everywhere, reminding us that a deeply personal, character-driven narrative can resonate more powerfully than the most extravagant Hollywood spectacles.

CONCLUSION

There’s simply nothing else quite like A Real Pain on theatre screens this year. As with all great movies - it all stems from a firm foundation; the screenplay. In this case, the writing is so strong it can truly be considered a piece of art in itself rather than just a blueprint. As such, it’s our opinion that Eisenberg should be nominated for a second (and third!) time for Best Actor and Best Original Screenplay, following his 2011 Best Actor nomination for The Social Network’s Mark Zuckerberg. 

We can only award 5/5.