Producers: Jessamine Burgum, Kara Durrett, Trudie Styler, Celine Rattray, Scarlett Johansson, Jonathan Lia and Keenan Flynn Director: Scarlett Johansson Screenplay: Tory Kamen Cast: June Squibb, Erin Kellyman, Jessica Hecht, Rita Zohar, Chiwetel Ejiofor, Will Price, Lauren Kline and Steven Singer Distributor: Sony Pictures Classics
Grade: B-
Scarlett Johansson’s directorial debut walks a fine line between feel-good empathy and tastelessness. It’s what might be called a Holocaust-by-proxy movie in particular and a study of grief more generally, while also being a genial portrayal of a spunky, sharp-tongued nonagenarian. Trying to cram all of that into a single film proves a tough assignment, but with the redoubtable June Squibb anchoring things “Eleanor the Great” manages the task reasonably well despite Johansson’s pedestrian direction.
Eleanor Morgenstein (Squibb) is introduced living in a Florida coastal apartment with her long-time best friend Bessie (Rita Zohar). They’ve been roommates for eleven years following the deaths of their husbands. But they’re very different. Bessie is a Holocaust survivor, inconsolable over the grief she feels over the loss of her family, especially her brother; they jumped off a train that was carrying them to a camp together, but he was shot while she scurried to safety, and she’s carried the guilt over the unfairness ever since. She tells the story to Eleanor only shortly before passing away herself, peacefully in her sleep.
Now alone, Eleanor moves back to New York City to live with her divorced daughter Lisa (Jessica Hecht) and grandson Max (Will Price). Lisa, trying to help her mother, arranges for her to join a community club, expecting her to attend a singing group. But finding that intolerable, she wanders the halls until a woman (Lauren Kline), misunderstanding her interest, invites her to another group, which turns out be a counseling session for Holocaust survivors. Invited by the rabbi (Steven Singer) to tell her story, the embarrassed Eleanor recites Bessie’s as her own.
That deception—innocent, perhaps, but unconscionable—impresses Nina (Erin Kellyman), a college journalism student observing the session in hopes of finding the subject for a class paper. She’s immediately taken with Eleanor, and the interest is mutual. They become friends, and it turns out that Nina is dealing with grief as well—the recent death of her mother. She’s also feeling distant from her father Roger (Chiwetel Ejiofor), who’s unable to cope with his wife’s loss; instead he immerses himself in his work as a human interest commentator on a television program that has made him a celebrity; by coincidence Eleanor is a big fan.
From this point Tony Kamen’s script focuses on two interrelated tracks. One centers on how Eleanor is drawn against her will into owning, and expanding, the false story she impulsively embraced, which Roger takes up. The other involves the intense friendship that develops between her and Nina. How the two converge is fairly predictable, leading to closure for both of them and reconciliation between father and daughter. Plenty of room is made for Squibb to show off Eleanor’s sauciness, not only on her outings with Nina but in a sidebar in which she asks the rabbi to oversee the late-in-life bat mitzvah she never had (understandable, when it’s revealed that she’s a Des Moines-born woman who converted only when she married Mr. Morgenstein in 1953 and moved to New York with him).
Squibb has become one of the screen’s go-to actresses for embodying feisty old broads, and she again delivers the goods. She also captures the queasiness viewers feel along with Eleanor as she blunders into, and then gets trapped in, a lie that—especially given that it’s made before actual Holocaust survivors—is actually quite unsettling. (You can argue that it ensures that Bessie’s story will not go unrecorded, but that’s hardly exculpatory.) Squibb manages to maintain sympathy even as her character gets in deeper and deeper, but it’s a difficult chore, and Johansson is extremely fortunate to have her as the film’s star.
She also excels in convincing us of the friendship that grows between Eleanor and Nina—also not an inconsiderable feat, especially since Kellyman’s performance, while okay, is far from extraordinary. No one else in the supportive cast does outstanding work either—even Ejiofor is oddly muted—save Zohar, who’s unrestrained in displaying Bessie’s pain.
Technically, the film is scruffy but perfectly watchable. Happy Massee’s production design and Tom Broecker’s costumes fill the bill, and Hélène Louvart’s cinematography is workmanlike, while Harry Jierjian’s editing conceals the seams pretty well and Dustin O’Halloran’s score is relatively subdued.
Despite the title “Eleanor” is far from great, but it’s just good enough.