This seems to be the season for notable entries by actors turned directors.
Just a few weeks ago, Anna Kendrick made an impressive directorial debut with the suspenseful Woman of the Hour, in which she also starred.
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| Tour guide James (Will Sharpe, foreground) and the rest of their small group fail to notice when Benji (Kieran Culkin, in red shorts) impulsively embarrasses his cousin David (Jesse Eisenberg) with a bear hug. |
Equal credit, as well, for the lead performances by Eisenberg and Kieran Culkin.
New York-based David (Eisenberg) and his estranged cousin Benji (Culkin) reunite at an airport, en route to Warsaw for a Polish Holocaust history group tour. The trip has been made possible by money left by their recently deceased grandmother, and is prompted by their mutual desire to visit the home in which she lived, for many years.
Jewish history and the Holocaust are a grim backdrop to a character dynamic already heavy with unspoken angst.
The two men couldn’t be less alike. The workaholic David is sweet and smart, but shy, emotionally repressed and impaired by OCD tics partly dampened by prescription meds. He further holds himself together via lists, itineraries and meticulous planning.
This isn’t far from Eisenberg’s frequent acting wheelhouse; his flustered, overly apologetic nebbishes have long been a signature. But he’s extremely adept at it, and David’s deer-in-the-headlights reactions to his cousin’s antics are credibly painful.
The bipolar, relentlessly profane Benji navigates wild mood swings with marginal success. At his best, he’s cheery and personable: the life of the party. But in the blink of an eye, he turns rude, antagonistic and needlessly candid, insisting that everybody subscribe to his bent philosophy of the moment.
He self-medicates with marijuana and alcohol, which doesn’t help; he often doesn’t remember his previous day’s boorish behavior.
Culkin is all over the map; Benji’s manic intensity often lands like a punch in the gut, and his irresponsibility is infuriating. It’s hard to imagine spending even five minutes with this guy; Culkin’s performance leaps from the screen, as if daring us to remain in our seats.
At Benji’s best, David admires his easy facility with other people; alternative, he’s frequently embarrassed by his cousin’s blunt and often cruel diatribes. As an emotionally wrecked David points out, at a telling moment, Benji can charm an entire room ... and then poops all over it.
But here’s the thing: These two guys clearly love each other deeply, despite finding it so difficult to connect. David’s worried expressions speak volumes, as does Benji’s admiration for his conventional and happily married cousin (tics and all).
Eisenberg opens his film with an airport waiting room tableau; cinematographer Michal Dymek slides among arriving and departing passengers, finally settling on Benji, sitting placidly in a chair. His expression is tabula rasa; David learns, upon joining him, that his cousin has been there for hours.
Not a good start.
Once in Warsaw, they join a small tour group led by erudite and affable James (Will Sharpe). The gathering includes Marsha (Jennifer Grey), recently divorced, and trying to re-discover herself; Mark and Diane (David Oreskes and Liza Sadovy), an affable Midwestern couple; and Eloge (Kurt Egyiawan), a Rwandan survivor who converted to Judaism.
Benji and Marsha bond quickly, linked by their mutual emotional angst; the quietly philosophical Eloge — Egyiawan delivers a terrific performance — is similarly sympathetic to Benji’s erratic mood swings.
Mark and Diane ... not so much. Oreskes’ silently judgmental expression is priceless, and Mark unleashes the film’s funniest one-liner, during one of the train legs of their tour. He doesn’t get Benji at all. (In fairness, most people wouldn’t.)
The anxious, often agitated fusillades that Benji throws into group activities gain weight from his escalating irritation over the disconnect between James’ placid, scholarly approach to horrific historic sites, and the quiet unease with which the tour members take their first-class accommodations for granted, while contemplating WWII atrocities.
Although Eisenberg works hard to establish a distinct atmosphere, we’re often yanked out of it by the relentless, piano-based Chopin score. It’s too loud, too intrusive, and too redundant.
The tour climaxes with a visit to the former Majdanek concentration camp, just five minutes from the city center of Lublin. The normally voluble James explains that he’ll refrain from his usual discourse, to “allow the camp to speak for itself.” Eisenberg does the same, and — let’s just say — that silence speaks volumes.
(Eisenberg’s script emerged during a two-week trip to Poland, and a visit to a tiny house in the village of Kranystaw, where his aunt had lived before the Holocaust displaced her entire family.)
On the flip side of this emotional coin, James introduces the group to the Jewish tradition of placing small rocks atop a grave headstone, as a means of honoring the deceased, showing respect and — even so many years later — participating in the mitzvah of burial.
This solemn gesture has a sweet payoff when his film reaches its final moments.
But has this journey changed anything? That’ll likely fuel considerable debate, after the screen goes dark ... and that’s also the mark of a well-crafted story.
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