Conclave is my favorite film and my favorite screenplay of the year. Director Edward Berger created a film in such a way as to make something that most people would find mundane into a riveting drama that felt so compelling that it felt like the fate of the world was at stake. That isn’t necessarily hyperbole, as the Pope is the leader of the world’s 1.4 billion Catholics. That’s a sizeable portion of the world’s population using one man as their spiritual advisor and role model.

Screenwriter Peter Straughan crafted a screenplay based on the novel by Robert Harris that was tight, layered, and kept the audience wondering who wanted the papacy and for what reason, and showed a group of men, some of whom were very good, but all of which were deeply flawed, who sought this power for different reasons. The irony of the film and of the papacy is that those who do not want it are the most deserving, and those who want it the most are the ones who should be kept farthest from it.

This film is 100% drama. There are no action sequences in it, although there is an explosion. However, the drama holds the audience’s attention far better than any car chase or CG-laden action sequence could. The screenwriting in this script tells a story about loyalty and betrayal and about who the future will belong to. Will it belong to a few elites who view themselves as the arbiters of morality? Or will it belong to all of us? Will God grant salvation to those who follow strict dogma? Or will He show mercy to all?  Conclave is about much more than a group of Cardinals electing a new pope. It is about all of us deciding what our future will be.

Unlike many other films this year, Conclave’s message is one of hope.

Many of the films that received this year’s most prestigious nominations were tonally pessimistic. Not all of them, but many of them were. Conclave, on the other hand, starts out with Cardinal Lawrence (Ralph Fiennes) as the Dean of the College of Cardinals. He is in charge of organizing and managing the Conclave, but he is struggling with his faith. He doesn’t know where he belongs, and he believes the deceased pope had lost faith in him before his passing. Over the course of the film, his faith is resurrected as he once again feels the presence of the Holy Spirit. Perhaps the most impressive thing about Conclave is that it told a spiritual story in a secular way and in a way that both believers and non-believers will appreciate and enjoy.

But on to the screenplay.

Conclave works so well because it is dramatic. It is dramatic because Straughan gave the script a tight Hero’s Journey and a story structure that is subtle but heightens drama, conflict, and intrigue to captivate viewers and hold tightly to their attention. Here is a rough outline of Conclave’s Hero’s Journey.

Ordinary World – The Pope is dead.

Call to Adventure – Lawrence is called to organize the Conclave to select a new pope.

Refusal – Lawrence doubts his faith and his abilities, and he doesn’t want to be Dean of the Conclave.

Meeting the Mentor – Cardinal Aldo Bellini (Stanley Tucci) impresses upon Lawrence the importance of a progressive getting elected to continue the work of the previous pope and threatens that a conservative like Cardinal Tedesco (Sergio Castellitto) will undo the work of the previous 50 years (high stakes). Sister Agnes (Isabella Rossellini) is introduced here and will become a mentor and an ally later in the film. We also meet Cardinal Benitez, who was only known to the late pope and was secretly the Cardinal of Kabul

Crossing the First Threshold – The Conclave Begins.

Tests, Allies, and Enemies – Lines are drawn. It’s clear who will be a good pope and who will not. Different factions form. Lawrence gives a call to action at the conference about certainty in one of the most brilliantly written and brilliantly performed monologues I’ve ever seen. The script could win the Oscar for that monologue alone. The ballots don’t go their way. Lawrence receives information about Cardinal Tremblay (John Lithgow) that leads to suspicion.

Approach – Lawrence learns of a terrorist attack in another part of the city, but being sequestered, he keeps that information from the other Cardinals for fear that it will influence how they vote. Then, a confrontation between frontrunner Cardinal Adeyemi Lucian Msamati) and a young nun leads to…

Supreme Ordeal – Lawrence disqualifies Adeyemi, opening the door for Tedesco and throwing the Conclave into more uncertainty. The direction of the story shifts here from the goal of getting Aldo elected to simply preventing Tedesco from ascending to the papacy, even if it means pushing Tremblay’s candidacy.

Reward – Lawrence puts his faith in God to select the Pope. “Let God’s will be done,” he says. They decide on Tremblay but then Lawrence gets evidence of Tremblay’s corruption from Sister Agnes. Lawrence breaks the seal of the deceased pope’s apartment and discovers how deep Tremblay’s corruption goes.

The Road Back – Lawrence must decide whether to share the information with the other Cardinals. Lawrence realizes Aldo lacks the moral courage to be Pope because he’s willing to sit on the information for fear it will turn the Cardinals to Tedesco. Lawrence decides to share the information. It appears Tedesco will win, and Lawrence is the only one who can stop him. He even admits he would choose the name John if elected when he previously said he never gave any thought to what his papal name would be. Then, a terrorist attack blows out the windows of the cathedral as Lawrence is about to cast his vote for himself.

Resurrection – Tedesco uses racism to show why the church should be more conservative. Cardinal Benitez stands against Tedesco and says the Church is in our hearts and should be looking towards the future. Back in the cathedral, the wind blows the Holy Spirit in through the broken window. Benitez wins on the next ballot and takes the name Innocent.

Return With the Elixir – The twist. “I am what God made me. I know what it is to exist between the world’s certainties.”

This film has been out for a while, but I’m not going to spoil the ending in case the reader hasn’t seen it.

Conclave is about a man rediscovering his faith. Not only that but in an archetypal way, his faith is resurrected through the tests he faces as the story’s hero. His character arc was subtle but powerful. The drama in the story is also subtle and powerful. Conclave is a quiet but powerful movie, and its layered screenplay, with its emotional character arcs and thoughtful storytelling, is the best adapted screenplay of the year.

I wrote a blog on this film earlier this year, but this post will focus on the screenplay. As everyone knows, A Complete Unknown is a biopic about Bob Dylan’s early career, how he dealt with rising fame, his tumultuous relationships with Joan Baez and Sylvie Russo, and his struggle to define himself as more than a folk singer. Discussing this film in my podcast, I described it as broad but shallow. Screenwriters James Mangold and Jay Crocks adapted Elijah Wald’s book. Dylan Goes Electric somewhat effectively in getting as much material as they could into the film but they were unable to explore anything much beyond the surface level.

Screenplays for biopics are very difficult to tackle. Screenplays are expected to adhere to specific structural components to create stories with rising levels of drama and significant conflict and tension. The problem is that the real lives of people rarely fit neatly into a 3-act structure, necessitating creative license to be taken. A delicate balance often needs to be taken. Add too much creative license and the screenplay will be unrealistic and will alienate fans of the original artist or those who know a lot about him or her. Stay too realistic, and you risk writing a script that lacks drama with potentially wonky pacing and story structure.

Mangold and Crocks chose to sacrifice depth to cast a wide net.

Writing a screenplay is always about the choices you make. Those choices determine what the director has to work with and what kind of film will ultimately be produced. I am not saying this to be critical in any way of the choices that Mangold, who is also the film’s director, and Crocks made. They went with a broad story covering as much material as possible to make the best story and draw the largest audience. They were rewarded with one of the most critically acclaimed movies of the year, a Best Picture Nomination, a Best Adapted Screenplay Nomination, and eight Academy Award Nominations in total.

However, a case could be made that more depth would have made a better film.

A Complete Unknown is a good film and there were great moments. The moments that were great showed Dylan’s bucking tradition. The most dramatic moments showed him struggling with his relationships with Baez and Russo. They showed him as an intensely introverted person struggling to deal with his meteoric rise to become one of the most popular musicians at a time when musicians were most popular. The problem is we didn’t care about any of it.

I always tell writers that the plot is what happens, and the story is why we care. The writers did a good job of cramming a real-life story into a balanced story that had a complete 3-act structure, but they didn’t do enough to get us into the weeds.

I wanted to see more of the turmoil brought on by his simultaneous love interests. I wanted to see why it was important to him to go electric. He makes the point that he doesn’t want to be put in a box and that he wants to explore different genres. In fact, the last third of the movie does delve into this idea and it creates a dramatic ending. Unfortunately, it didn’t reach its full potential because Mangold and Crocks hadn’t laid enough groundwork to engage the audience sufficiently.

One thing the writers did that worked well from a structural standpoint. I often espouse the fact that screenplays are really written in four acts rather than three acts. I have blogged about it in the past and taught seminars on it as well. The screenplay for A Complete Unknown was written in four acts, and each act primarily follows a different trope. Act I shows Dylan in his Ordinary World as a humble folk musician slowly gaining popularity. Act II shows him struggling with his relationships with Baez and Russo. Act III shows him dealing with fame and struggling to reconcile with it. Act IV shows him wanting to move beyond folk music and become a more well-rounded performer.

The problem I have with this structure is there was no real conflict until the fourth act. There was a lot of great music, and the character development between Dylan and his love interests and between Dylan and his allies and eventual enemies was nice. But the lack of conflict resulted in lack of drama. There should have at least been conflict between Dylan and Baez and between Dylan and Russo. There was a small amount, but not enough to make that portion of the script as dramatic as it should have been.

There is a moment in Act IV when Dylan convinces Russo to go with him to the Newport Folk Festival, where he’s planning on performing an electric set because he needs her support. It should have been an incredibly dramatic moment, but it fell flat because we didn’t get into their relationship enough. There were no stakes for the characters or for the audience. Someone unfamiliar with Dylan’s life should have had a rooting interest in whether he ended up with Baez or with Russo. That would have created conflict between the women, and it would have created drama in the story. Because that drama wasn’t created and built on, there was no emotional reaction to Dylan asking Russo to go to the festival with him, and that should have been the most emotional moment of the script.

In a weird way, one of the overall film’s greatest strengths turned into one of the screenplay’s biggest weaknesses. There are a lot of songs in this film. The movie is almost like a glorified Bob Dylan concert movie. Not only are there a lot of songs, but Mangold sticks with most of the songs in their entirety. Until the fourth act, most of the story in the script feels like it’s there to get us from one song to another. The number of songs is great for showing how prolific Dylan was as a songwriter, and it makes for an entertaining film if you like Dylan’s music, which I do, but it doesn’t do much for the story. In my opinion, this is where Mangold and Crocks did not succeed as screenwriters. They needed to find a better balance between the songs and the story. There was a bit of instant gratification in hearing all those songs, but it led to an empty feeling leaving the theater.

The songs were like drinking a soda that tastes good but does little to quench your thirst. They were entertaining in that moment, but ironically didn’t do enough to tell the story of Dylan’s life. This is ironic because so many of Dylan’s songs told compelling stories, and the film that told the story of his life was not compelling enough.

The screenplay for A Complete Unknown is very good. It is also flawed and should not be named this year’s Best Adapted Screenplay.

I know this film has been out for a while, but I finally got a chance to see it in a theater last weekend. It’s a strong film and is worthy of its Best Picture nomination, but it’s unlikely to be named the Best Picture of the year. As much as I enjoyed it, I wouldn’t vote for it and would rank it somewhere in the middle of the pack of this year’s nominees. I’m glad the Academy recognized it, however, because it’s an interesting character study, and it has the vibes of a modern-day fairy tale.

WARNING! SPOILERS!

On the surface, Anora is a modern-day Cinderella, but it has a much darker ending than the version Disney gave us more than 70 years ago. There is no happy ending in this movie, and Ani (Mikey Madison) doesn’t get her Prince Charming. In fact, Anora is a film that is reflective of the times we currently live in, and screenwriter/director Sean Baker clearly looks at our world as bleak, especially for marginalized people.

Anora is about Ani, an exotic dancer and call girl who performs for Ivan (Mark Eydelshteyn), the son of a Russian oligarch. Striking up a connection with each other, Ivan pays for her services for a week. She falls in love with him, and he seemingly falls in love with her. On an impromptu trip to Vegas, they get married. Once his parents get wind that their son married a prostitute, they demand that the marriage be annulled and send their henchmen, Toros (Karren Karagulian), Garnik (Vache Tovmasya), and Igor (Yura Borisov) to force Ivan and Ani to the courthouse sign the annulment.

And mad-capped mayhem ensues.

Baker’s script, which was nominated for Best Original Screenplay, is fantastic. As a screenwriter, Baker hit all the right beats and gave us a script with a tight Hero’s Journey and a complex set of thematic components that made this a stunningly thoughtful film. There is a lot of sex and nudity, but none of it feels gratuitous. We see the world that Ani lives in. She is navigating it as best she can, and she is good at what she does. She even seems to enjoy it on a personal level for the friends she has and the people she interacts with, but it is a world in which she is objectified. This is her archetypal Ordinary World, and she needs to escape it. She Crosses the Threshold, entering the Special World that Ivan introduces her to, and she fights hard to remain in it.

I am going to write a more detailed breakdown of the screenplay in a future blog, so stay tuned.

From there, the story is dramatic, and the characters are dynamic. Madison is nominated for Best Actress, and Borisov is nominated for Best Supporting Actor, and the chemistry between their characters carries the second half of the film until its utterly heartbreaking ending. Madison brings empathy, sympathy, and likability to a character who is so far on the margins that we should not be able to relate to her. But her performance allows the audience to engage with her on an emotional level and to empathize with her struggles so that we care for her and root for her in surprising ways.

Borisov’s performance is much more subtle as the tough guy with a heart of gold who seemingly understands the moral and ethical ambiguity of what he’s doing. We spend much of the second half of the film looking at Ani through his eyes, even though she seemingly couldn’t care less about his opinions.

Aside from his screenwriting, Baker also distinguishes himself as a director, and he has garnered an additional Oscar nomination in that category. Baker crafted a film with dynamic, thoughtful cinematography, outstanding acting performances, and a story with a tight dramatic structure and attention-grabbing thematic components.

I mentioned earlier that this is like a Cinderella-type of story, however there was no happily ever after in Anora. If this movie had come out a decade or two ago, it’s entirely possible that Ani would have ended up as a rags-to-riches story on a beach with her billionaire husband. However, the times we live in today are not as optimistic as times of the past, and Baker gives us a powerful, heavy ending that leaves the audience asking, “Now what?” The ending was reminiscent of the final shot of The Graduate, but it was a much more intense scene. Baker brilliantly ended the film by giving us an emotional meat grinder and then cutting to black with no score. Just a silent role of the credits. I was in a crowded theater, and no one said a word as they exited. The ending hung heavily in the air like a balloon made of lead. It was raw and palpable and took us 180 degrees from the hedonistic frivolity with which the movie started.

What started out as a movie showing life as a big party ended with a devastating hangover. It was a cruel twist that left us feeling pessimistic about Ani and her future, and no words at that time would have appropriately described anyone’s feelings. That’s how powerful the ending of Anora was.

I would be shocked if Anora won Best Picture, but I’m glad I saw it. I’m glad filmmakers are creating modern fairy tales and turning the fairy tale trope on its ear. They make for powerful stories that stay with us long after we’ve left the theater, forcing us to examine the world we occupy. The fact that I have this feeling after seeing Anora was completely unexpected and totally satisfying.

I finally got to see The Substance over the weekend, and although my feelings are mixed, I came away impressed. This isn’t a perfect film. Of the films that are nominated for Best Picture this year, I would rank it somewhere in the middle of the pack. However, it is a powerful film that, in many ways, is like a modern-day fairy tale. Fairy tales are known for clear themes and points of view, and The Substance absolutely checks those boxes. The film also has an excellent screenplay, thoughtful and innovative cinematography, and acting performances worthy of Oscar consideration.

Director Coralie Fargeat channeled her inner Stanley Kubrick to deliver a powerful film about the objectification of women and how our society mistreats them as they age. When women are treated as objects, valued only for their beauty, they are cast aside as their beauty and bodies betray them with age. Many women (and men) cling to that beauty as long as they can through plastic surgery and other synthetic methods, and the results over time are often far more detrimental to their appearances than the natural aging process would have been.

Fargeat tackled that issue head-on in this film, and she also did something else that was very interesting. She also took a critical look at how women treat each other. While women broadly support each other through various organizations, there is a hyper-competitiveness among many women in the workplace, and this film bluntly shows two women who will mutually benefit by working together, but the selfishness of one of them leads to vindictiveness in the other, which leads to the ultimate downfall of both. That is the biggest reason that it was essential for a woman to direct this film. She tells women through this film that there is nothing women cannot accomplish when working together, but their inability to do that is ultimately what holds them back.

Bill Burr put it ever so concisely in a comedy routine several years ago. Take a look at it here.

Body Horror with a point

The term body horror has been used to describe The Substance, but I’m not sure it applies in the traditional sense. There are some disturbing and graphic images of mutilation and deformations, but it was never scary or even gratuitous. It was, in fact, a metaphor for the point made above. We are so focused on beauty in our society that women (and men) are willing to destroy their bodies at a cellular level to hold onto their beauty, even for just a few more fleeting years and even at the expense of the last several years of their lives. This is visual storytelling at its best. It shows us everything we need to know without telling us a word.

If you are a screenwriter trying to figure out how to tell a story visually and metaphorically, this is a film you should study.

The screenplay is excellent in other ways as well. Fargeat was also the screenwriter for the film, and she is justifiably nominated for Best Original Screenplay. Not only does the script excellently and effectively tell a compelling visual story with poignant thematic components, but it also has a riveting dramatic structure and rising levels of tension and drama that all screenwriters can learn from. The script also has a tight Hero’s Journey that helps guide the story and build the drama. All the stages of the Hero’s Journey are represented, and it’s written in such an organic way that very little of the script feels contrived or forced.

This is an excellent story that is very well told

I mentioned above that as a director, Fargeat channeled her inner Standly Kubrick, and that was meant as a compliment. Anyone who follows this blog with any regularity knows that Kubrick is my favorite director, and many of his films are on my personal top-5, top-10, and top-20 lists. It is clear from watching The Substance that Fargeat is very familiar with The Shining, A Clockwork Orange, and 2001: A Space Odyssey. From camera angles, to color palette, to story points, Fargeat produced a work of art that would have made Kubrick proud. If you are a fan of Stanley Kubrick, this is a film you should see.

Finally, I would be remiss if I didn’t mention the acting. Demi Moore, every straight Gen-X male’s first celebrity crush, gives what might be the best performance of her career as Elisabeth Sparkle, the Hollywood bombshell on the back end of her career, being pushed aside for a younger, prettier model. She deservedly won the Golden Globe. I’m not sure if she’ll win the Oscar, but I, for one, would not have the least problem with it. She brought brooding subtlety to a performance that was searing with hot emotion bubbling just under the surface, waiting to be unleashed. But she didn’t carry this film alone. Margaret Qualley more than held her own as Sue, the younger version who ends up trying to destroy Elizabeth and take over her life. There’s an Anne Baxter-Betty Davis (All About Eve) quality to the relationship taken to new and disturbing levels. Finally, Dennis Quaid, as Harvey, the sexist, disgusting TV executive who sets all this in motion, gives a performance that is over the top but also weirdly spot-on.

This is not a perfect film. I felt like it went off the rails a little over the last 20 minutes or so. I didn’t dislike the ending, but I felt like Fargeat drew it out too long. I might have liked it more if it had been the last 10 minutes instead of 20. I felt myself thinking, I really am ready for this movie to end, but it kept going. It obviously didn’t ruin the film for me, and it may be a bit of a nitpick, but it prevented the film from reaching the upper echelon of this year’s Best Picture nominees.

The Substance is the deepest film of 2024

That said, even though it might not be the best film of the year, in my opinion, I do believe that it is the deepest film of the year. The Substance has a powerful message and strong themes. It is a modern-day fairy tale that harkens to the darkest stories of the Brothers Grimm to teach us that beauty is fleeting and should never be tied irrevocably to our self-worth.

The main thing I want to say about The Brutalist is that I will be pissed off if it wins Best Picture. I have a feeling it will, so I’m going to hold off on doing a full-fledged review of it now. If it wins, it will be included in my Best Picture Blog series. If it doesn’t… well, I already spent three and a half hours sitting through it in the theater, and I’d rather not spend more time than I have to writing about it.

Perhaps I’m being too hard on this movie. I realize I am deep in the minority on this one. It’s currently got a 93% critics score on Rotten Tomatoes and 81% from the fans. To be honest, I don’t understand those numbers at all. I thought The Brutalist was too long, too slow, and too boring. Too many things were planted that were never paid off. Too many of the characters were unlikable. Not nearly enough happened to make me care about any of the characters or anything that happened to them, other than maybe Erzebet (Felicity Jones).

Here is what I will say about The Brutalist that is positive. It’s not a film so much as it is a work of art. Every once in a while, over the last couple of decades, a movie comes out that disregards the standards of Hollywood filmmaking. These films are often very long, very deliberately paced, and take place over several years. I’m thinking about films like Boyhood, The Power of the Dog, and Killers of the Flower Moon, with the latter straddling the line between a traditional Hollywood film and this more artistic style to which I’m referring. The Brutalist fits this mode. It’s long, deliberate, and takes place over several years. Like Boyhood, the deliberate pacing makes it akin to watching a painting. It’s a painting that’s moving, but a painting, nonetheless. The earliest movie like this was probably Stanley Kubrick’s Barry Lyndon. These films are largely character-driven without a clear, cohesive story in which the protagonist has a goal for the audience to root for. The movie is more a character study of the character’s life.

The Brutalist is more character study than story.

There is a story in there. It’s not much of a story, but it’s there. The story follows Lazlo Toth (Adrien Brody), a brilliant architect who escaped the Nazis and ended up in Philadelphia and was taken in by his brother, but a failed business venture causes him to move into a shelter in Philadelphia. But his talent catches the eye of Harrison Lee Van Buren (Guy Pierce), a wealthy industrialist who wants a community center built to honor his late mother. Van Buren hires Lazlo to design the center, and a battle of wills ensues as cost overruns and artistic differences, along with Lazlo’s continued addiction problems and issues with his family, threaten to derail the project.

The main issue I had with the story was the lack of drama. There were dramatic moments, but I found myself not caring about anyone in the movie or anything that happened to them. There were opportunities for the script to get very dramatic and a couple of jarring moments got my attention. But for the most part, this movie was one big long yawn.

A Real Pain is one of those movies that feels like a gut punch you want to take over and over again. It’s a beautiful work of art that simmers with drama and emotion. Screenwriter, director, and star Jesse Eisenberg did a masterful job of weaving emotional relationship-building with a story that is as much an internal journey as it is an external one. Both Eisenberg’s character, David Kaplan, and Kieran Culkin’s Benji Kaplan, are broken in their own way, and those fissures are exacerbated when they come into contact with each other.

The brilliance in the screenplay and the film lies in the fact that they’re cousins who are forced to spend time together on a pilgrimage to see the birthplace of their grandmother, a Holocaust survivor who recently passed away and had vastly different relationships with the two of them. David is (almost painfully) introverted and a rule follower. He can’t mask his discomfort when things go against protocol, and he does his level best just to go along to get along. He’s strait-laced and plays life by the rules as an adult with a good job, a wife, a child, and a comfortable home. It seems important to him that everyone likes him.

Benji, on the other hand, wears his heart on his sleeve and doesn’t flinch in telling people his true feelings, however much discomfort that might bring to the situation. He is emotional, loud, and vibrant, and he never has a thought that he doesn’t express. It’s not as important to him to be liked, but his upfront nature, while off-putting at the moment, earns him the respect of almost everyone who meets him.

These two divergent personalities are thrust together on a trip that reveals to both of them what they need to fix, but in a very satisfying way, leaving them without the motivation to fix it. Often, in films like this, we’re presented with broken characters who go through an emotional meat grinder that is the story and end up fixed at the end.

Warning! Spoilers!

There is no such fairytale ending in this script. Movies like that are great. Alexander Payne is the master of fixing broken characters, and his films are wonderful. However, A Real Pain gives us the brutal reality that things aren’t always ready to be tied up in neat little bows. The film’s title is descriptive. There is real pain in this film, and that kind of pain isn’t healed overnight. It also isn’t healed if the person feeling it isn’t ready, able, or willing to heal it. That might make some people feel like this long internal journey resulted in a dead end, but that isn’t the way it really feels at all. This is a story about confronting your pain. Whether you get over it or not is immaterial. The act of confronting it, acknowledging it, and experiencing it is the film’s catharsis. You can’t appreciate the good in your life unless you experience life’s pain, and David is especially in need of that confrontation. He arrives home, hopefully with a renewed sense of self and an appreciation for the good things in his life.

Benji, on the other hand, starts the film out way more in touch with who he is. His whole life is in pain, and that pain has broken him. He ends the film in the same place, both emotionally and physically, that he starts it. It’s an incredible bookend, to be honest. While it gives the film a melancholy ending, it’s what gives the film that raw realism that makes the pain real in A Real Pain.

The plot has some very powerful moments as the cousins join a tour group touring the places where some of the most notorious Nazi atrocities occurred during World War II. Benji, disturbed by the idea of this holocaust tourism, calls it out, which causes a lot of discomfort for David and the other people on the tour, but his raw emotion speaks to the other tourists. Despite David’s attempts at appeasement and his opening up as much as he can to them, they all seem to love Benji more in the end, or at least they all have deeper emotional connections to him. Their farewell to the tour group is a telling sign of how cathartically revealing pain can be and how damaging it can be to hold that pain inside.

There is a lot going on under the surface in this screenplay. Eisenberg showed his true talent as a screenwriter, and this is a script that screenwriters should reference when attempting to write compelling subtext. A Real Pain is one of those movies you really need to reflect on, and it might even require multiple viewings to get the full breadth of what it’s trying to say.

I hope it gets more love at the Oscars than it did at the Golden Globes. No one plays broken characters like Kieran Culkin, and his GG was well-deserved, and he’s certain to be, at the very least, nominated for an Oscar. But Eisenberg deserves recognition for the masterful screenplay he wrote and for his subtle direction that produced one of the most powerful movies of the year.