The question of ego might be best answered in the portrayal of one’s (imaginary) nemesis.
During their stage greeting at the 38th Tokyo International Film Festival, director Nakano Ryōta lauded actor Odagiri Joe’s ability to offer copious iterations of obnoxious yet annoyingly charming slackers in his filmography. When I heard this comment in the audience, Kieran Culkin’s character in A Real Pain (2024) immediately sprung to mind. Perhaps it was because I watched the film in the same theater at the same festival a year ago; but more likely, the pairing of a humanist writer-director and a charismatic actor with a rebellious edge, similar to Jesse Eisenberg and Culkin, augured a poignant portrayal of the “loveable loser.” The astonishing parallels between Bring Him Down to a Portable Size (兄を持ち運べるサイズに) and A Real Pain confirmed my suspicions and then some. Both “loveable losers” turn out to be the ultimate litmus test of one’s enormous ego in a time when individuals become too individualistic.
Idiosyncratic and spellbinding as they are, Odagiri’s older brother character (ani) and Culkin’s Benji do not occupy the central roles of their respective films. The sudden death of ani leaves a series of unanswered questions for his estranged sister Riko (Shibasaki Kō), whereas Benji’s impulses, callousness, and enviable magnetism constantly affect his cousin David (Eisenberg) over the course of a multi-day tour. Their supporting roles, however, are not relegations of any kind but surprisingly constructive reminders of who their lifelong “rivals” (sister and cousin respectively) are. Critic Mick LaSalle called the genre of A Real Pain “the Kieran Culkin movie”; with Bring Him Down, I’d like to proclaim the emergence of “the hard self-truth film,” in which the protagonist is coerced into a phase of self-reflection in the process of understanding their imaginary nemesis.
Both Riko and David grow up hating the fact that the losers are so beloved by everyone around them, especially the ones whose love they putatively compete for. We are told by Riko’s internal thoughts that the self-serving ani had been taking advantage of their mother’s disproportionate love for him but abandoned her upon hearing the news of her cancer because it was simply too “unbearable”; for the better part of the film, she complains how ani seemingly continues to cause trouble for his family (herself, ex-wife Kanako, his son and daughter) even after his own death. David, in A Real Pain, obsessively ponders Benji’s aggravating charm throughout their trip to Poland, where they join a Jewish heritage tour in honor of their late grandmother who was a Holocaust survivor. After witnessing how Benji has bonded with fellow tour group members and continuously disrupted his socializing efforts, David feels compelled to deliver to the group a monologue about Benji’s troubled nature, which ends on an uncomfortable note: “Sorry, I’m … oversharing” followed by a brief moment of awkward silence. A similar scene in Bring Him Down features Riko’s desperate search for a shared comprehension of ani’s destructive presence (and absence) from Kanako, who shocks Riko with her adamant disagreement despite her divorcing ani. In learning about the disparities between their own and others’ perspectives of the losers, the two protagonists, perhaps for the first time, become remotely aware of their own moral makeups.
The loveable loser has been a staple of cinema raising questions about masculinities and democracy: Antoine Doinel in The 400 Blows (1959) and the subsequent films, the Coen brothers’ many lead characters such as the Dude in The Big Lebowski (1998) and the titular musician in Inside Llewyn Davis (2013), Abe Hiroshi’s brilliantly failing divorcee in After the Storm (2016), amongst others. Rather than channeling the Mulveyan male gaze, these men struggle to be spectacularly narcissistic and tumble their way throughout, albeit with their redeeming qualities divulged near the end. Cultural historians Susanne Kord and Elisabeth Krimmer concluded their excellent survey of male loser films with a piercing observation on the genre’s manifesto: “if there is a measure for humanity, it lies in the treatment accorded to hapless men.” By transposing the loveable loser to the passive antagonist’s position, Bring Him Down and A Real Pain reconfigure the measure for humanity into one’s ability to face one’s self-truth.
But why does the importance of self-truth come into focus now? And why would another person, one who’s close to the heart, be responsible for its discovery (in progress)? Eisenberg and Nakano are less interested in tackling the so-called crisis of masculinity than in confronting our frequent failures to convert jealousy and fears of discomfort into humility. The loser at the center roasts the impossibility or brutality of conventional masculine ideals, while the loser in close proximity ridicules one’s narrow-mindedness. Intolerance of the other, unfortunately furthered by digital isolation and neoliberal anxiety, seems to be at the root of the increasing externalization of conflict. David got frustrated when others try to sympathize with Benji: “but isn’t everyone in pain in some way? … I know that my pain is unexceptional, so I don’t feel the need to … burden everybody with it.” As if there’s a universal way of processing pain.
The loser at the center roasts the impossibility or brutality of conventional masculine ideals, while the loser in close proximity ridicules one’s narrow-mindedness.
Nakano is more upfront about the bigotry of his protagonist Riko. At a really young age, she already secretly wished for the departure of ani. No one knows about this secret except herself, she thinks, but the now dead ani materializes in a supermarket and teases her about it. He then mockingly tells the panicking Riko: “After all, I’m your imagination!” Her jealousy-fueled contempt for ani bothers her because it lays bare her own pettiness, a flaw of hers that she doesn’t like to admit. David never quite grasps the mystery behind Benji’s wonderful dysfunctionality and suffering that led to his suicide attempt; yet, Riko is blessed with her imagination as a successful writer. She even passes this imagination on to ani’s ex-wife and son, which might be endearing to some but a stretch too far, or too much of a white lie, to this writer. With this wishful thinking, Nakano inadvertently cheats his way to sentimental closure without furnishing sufficient space for us to dive into the deep end of hard (self-)truths.
Before parting ways, Kanako objects to Riko’s beliefs one last time: “You don’t think people need money to be happy, right? I’ve never seen a poor person who’s also happy though.” At the end, Riko is left with the task of becoming mindful of her middle-class familial bliss. She might have more issues resolved than David does, but perhaps understanding the pain of others remains a lifelong process for all. And this process calls for staring hard into one’s self-truth.
Bring Him Down to a Portable Size opens theatrically on 28 November 2025.
Heidi Ka-Sin Lee is a film researcher and a lecturer in the Department of English Studies at Sophia University. She earned her PhD in international culture and communication studies from Waseda University. Her research interests include queer cinema, cognitive film theory, character engagement, film music, and intermedial adaptation. She has published articles on lesbian-centered films and series in journals such as Senses of Cinema and USC’s Spectator as well as The Routledge Handbook of Motherhood on Screen.
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