Producers: Dave McCary, Ali Herting, Emma Stone, Jesse Eisenberg, Jennifer Semler and Ewa Puszczyńska   Director: Jesse Eisenberg   Screenplay: Jesse Eisenberg   Cast: Jesse Eisenberg, Kieran Culkin, Will Sharpe, Jennifer Grey, Kurt Egyiawan, Liza Sadovy, Daniel Oreskes   Distribution: Searchlight Pictures

Grade: B

If one were forced to categorize Jesse Eisenberg’s road trip film, tragicomedy probably fits best.  But “A Real Pain” is only fitfully funny, and the drama it depicts in its characters pales beside that they are contemplating from many years’ distance.  It does, however, portray both in a tone that allows for some dark humor and sharp observation. 

Eisenberg’s script shares its basic premise with Julia von Heinz’s recent “Treasure,” in which an American journalist (Lena Dunham) dragged her hesitant father, a Holocaust survivor played by Stephen Fry, on a journey through Poland in an attempt to recover her family history.  Here the travelers are the Kaplan cousins David (Eisenberg) and Benji (Kieran Culkin), who have been left a bequest by their much beloved, recently deceased, grandmother Dory, also a Holocaust survivor, to make a similar trip together.  The purpose is to immerse them, to some extent at least, in her background, but also, it would seem, to encourage them to rediscover the brotherly closeness they’d once enjoyed.

Despite that earlier camaraderie, they’ve grown up to be very different.  David, though skittish and unconfident, is the responsible one, with a solid job in New York City (digital advertising), along with a loving wife and son.  Benji, on the other hand, is a drug-addicted slacker, living with his mother in Binghamton and, we eventually learn, a self-destructive bent.  Yet he’s outgoing, easily charming everyone he encounters in spite of a habit of being honest with them, sometimes brutally so. 

David, a fastidious planner, has booked them for a group tour of Poland that will allow them to detach themselves for a separate trip to their grandmother’s erstwhile home town.  Their meeting at the airport for their departure is effusive, though the fact that Benji’s been there people-watching for hours takes David aback.  At the Warsaw hotel, to which Benji has mailed a packet of choice weed, they meet James (Will Sharpe), the intense British historian who will lead the tour, and their fellow journeyers: recently-divorced Marcia (Jennifer Grey), remaking her life after coming back to New York from California; older middle-class couple Mark and Diane (Daniel Oreskes and Liza Sadovy); and Eloge (Kurt Egyiawan), who converted to Judaism after enduring the Rwandan genocide.

All of the group members are spotlighted briefly along the way as they pass through sites that James chooses as emblematic of the Jewish experience in Poland—a memorial to the resisters in the Warsaw Ghetto, a Jewish cemetery, the old Jewish quarter in Lublin, the Majdanek concentration camp near the city—and the actors take maximum advantage of the opportunities, as when Michal Dymek’s camera catches each face as they pass the opening to the camp’s gas chamber.  But still they’re portrayed largely in terms of their interactions with the cousins, and particularly Benji, whose oversized personality, attractive but often off-putting—fascinates them, leading them to embrace even his most outrageous ideas, like posing as fighters beside the sculpted resistance heroes in the Warsaw memorial.  Benji even shames James into admitting that his constant recitation of facts is inappropriate at sites, like the cemetery, where silence would be welcome.

But it’s the complicated relationship between the cousins that’s the fulcrum of the narrative.  David is often embarrassed and apologetic about Benji’s actions, and upset when Benji belittles him or does things that undermine the smoothness of the trip, like neglecting to wake him at a train station where they were scheduled to disembark.  A train ride is also involved in one of Benji’s outbursts about riding the tracks so comfortably when Jews were once crammed in cattle cars on their way to death camps.

The cousins’ tangled bond is nicely caught in the screenplay and direction, but it’s fully brought to life by the two lead performances.  In many respects Eisenberg is doing familiar shtick, but he does it with considerable nuance while ceding center stage in great measure to Culkin, who manages to capture poignantly both his character’s manic charisma and the profound sadness beneath the exterior.  When, having found where Dory once lived and finding the current occupants not terribly welcoming, they fly back to New York and part at the airport, each resuming his life, the viewer is left to ponder what has changed in their understanding of the past, each other, and themselves.

Simply shot by Dymek, edited without frills by Robert Nassau, and scored almost completely with excerpts of Chopin played by pianist Trvi Erez, “A Real Pain” nimbly juggles confronting historical horror and coming to terms with familial relationships that have evolved over time.  Serious at its core but seizing opportunities for bleak humor, it represents a substantial accomplishment for both multi-hyphenate Eisenberg and the mercurial Culkin.  

Producers: Tessa Ross, Juliette Howell, Michael A. Jackman, Robert Harris and Alice Dawson   Director: Edward Berger   Screenplay: Peter Straughan   Cast: Ralph Fiennes, Stanley Tucci, John Lithgow, Isabella Rossellini, Sergio Castellito, Lucian Msamati, Carlos Diehz, Brian F. O’Byrne, Jacek Koman, Merab Ninidze, Thomas Loibl, Loris Loddi, Bruno Novelli and Balkissa Maiga    Distributor: Focus Features

Grade: B

A potboiler is a potboiler, however classily it’s presented, and “Conclave,” based on a 2016 thriller by prolific novelist Robert Harris, certainly is one.  It’s a pulpy mystery set around the machinations of cardinals of the Catholic Church as they engage in choosing a new pope.  Filled with ambitious prelates and a host of dark secrets, and featuring a parade of twists that would do Agatha Christie proud, it’s treated by director Edward Berger, production designer Suzie Davies, costumer Lily Christi, cinematographer Stephane Fontaine, editor Nick Emerson, composer Volker Bertelmann and a distinguished cast with all the dignified solemnity they can muster. 

But the movie’s essential goofiness renders it just a higher-toned cousin to Dan Brown’s books, and the best way to enjoy it is as an ecclesiastical version of a “Knives Out” puzzler.  If you appreciate its underlying comic spirit, it can be fun despite its absurdity.

Things begin with the death of the current pope (Bruno Novelli), a serene liberal (apparently more Francis than Benedict), of apparently natural causes.  It’s left to the Dean of the College of Cardinals, Thomas Lawrence (Ralph Fiennes), to arrange the convocation of male red-hats who will elect his successor.  Though Lawrence has some support himself, he reveals to Cardinal Bellini (Stanley Tucci), the man he prefers, that he had approached the late pope with a request to resign but been refused; he admits that he has personal doubts about his faith, though he goes into no specifics.  (If you’ll pardon the reference, you can call him Doubting Thomas.)

There quickly emerge several top candidates, or papabili.  One is Bellini, a veteran Vatican diplomat and a liberal who was a close friend of the deceased pope and claims not to want the job. But he’s so hostile to another popular choice, flamboyant, volatile ultra-traditional Cardinal Tedesco (Sergio Castellito), that his drive to win quickly becomes all-consuming.  Then there are Cardinal Adeyami (Lucian Msamati), the apostolic major penitentiary who would be the first pope from Africa and whose views fall between those two, and Cardinal Tremblay (John Lithgow), a Canadian who was the late pope’s chamberlain.

As the cardinals, more than a hundred in number, are sequestered to begin the electoral process, there’s a surprise arrival: an unknown new member, Cardinal Benitez (Carlos Diehz), a Mexican cleric who had served in social welfare capacities in global danger zones and was appointed as Archbishop of Kabul secretly by the deceased pope.  Despite hesitancy on the part of some of his colleagues, Lawrence urges his acceptance by the college.

Once the doors are closed, however, other incidents disturb the Dean’s careful planning.  A nun (Balkissa Maiga) serving under Sister Agnes (Isabella Rossellini), who’s charged with seeing to the cardinals’ needs, enters the dormitory in which they’re housed for the duration; her presence causes rumors to circulate, which Lawrence feels compelled to investigate.  Just as troubling is a report that comes to the Dean at the last minute from an archbishop (Jacek Koman) who was in charge of the papal household, claiming that the pope’s final meeting, with Tremblay had been contentious—something the cardinal, and another witness, staunchly deny.  Once again Lawrence feels compelled to break protocol and search for the truth, using his aide Monsignor O’Malley (Brian F. O’Byrne) as his conduit to the outside world.  In the end the Dean discovers secrets he would prefer not to have done.

And the outside world intrudes violently in the closed conclave as terrorist bombings shatter the peace in Europe, including Rome itself.  An anti-Islamic rant by Tedesco, whose attitude toward tolerance is stern under the best of circumstances (think Pius IX), is met by a gentle rebuke from Benitez that has a profound effect on the assembly.  But that is topped by a closing revelation that suggests that the late pope, a reformist whose efforts had prodded things forward only at the speed of the turtles he kept as pets in the Vatican ponds (thus moveth the church), had shrewdly arranged matters to ensure that the pace would accelerate after his departure.

By way of comparison to other films in which papal conclaves play a significant role, this one is certainly the best, especially if one doesn’t take it too seriously.  But the competition is, to put it mildly, not strong.  The best-known rival, Michael Anderson’s 1968 “The Shoes of the Fisherman,” based on Morris West’s novel, is stodgy and preachy, and, despite a game cast, badly acted.  “Conclave” makes its ideology no less blatant—liberals basically good, conservatives (Tedesco rabidly so in every respect, and Adeyami retrograde on social issues) if not bad, at least misguided.  But despite very deliberate pacing it maintains tension throughout its two-hour running-time, largely by reason of the fact that it’s a contraption built by Harris and screenwriter Peter Straughan for suspense, and the plot’s twists and turns keep viewers on their toes.  It also delivers well-calibrated crowd-pleasing moments, especially ones where Sister Agnes, in the person of the redoubtable Rossellini, breaks the taboo that women are to remain inconspicuous in such august clerical company.

It’s also blessed with an exceptional cast.  Fiennes anchors the picture with a beautifully nuanced turn in which almost infinitesimal gestures can speak volumes, and while Tucci and Lithgow have more limited opportunities, both are wonderfully controlled.  Msamati’s character is more voluble and Castellito’s positively over-the-top, but both provide what the plot demands, while Diehz exhibits the requisite mysterious serenity.

“Conclave” rejoices in dealing cheekily with the politics within the Vatican, but it won’t escape viewers that similar circumstances are to be found in all seats of power: overweening ambition exists everywhere.  By using a papal election as a microcosm of larger world realities, Berger’s film succeeds as both a critique of clerical chicanery and a warning that no institution is free of corruption and scandal.