Eleanor the Great/Sony Pictures Classics and Tristar Pictures
2 stars (out of 4)
Director: Scarlett Johansson
Starring: June Squibb, Erin Kellyman, Chiwetel Ejiofor, Jessica Hecht, and Rita Zohar
Language: English
Available: In theaters September 26
Many actors have said they love their career, “but what I really want to do is direct.” It’s a movie-colony cliché on par with stars moving to Montana “because Hollywood is so phony.”
Scarlett Johansson, the actor who gained fame in such movies as Girl with a Pearl Earring and The Avengers, may not be moving to the Bighorn Mountains, but she is casting a net beyond her thespian skills to take up the canvas director’s chair to helm her first feature, Eleanor the Great. The results are…tolerable.
Ninety-four-year-old widow Eleanor Morgenstein (played by actual 94-year-old June Squibb) decides to move from Florida to live with her daughter in New York after her lifelong friend and longtime roommate Bessie Stern (Rita Zohar) dies after shopping for kosher pickles. But as she leaves for the Big Apple, Eleanor is packing more than an outdated wardrobe and sentimental tchotchkes; she’s also carrying her friend Bessie’s painful, largely untold stories of being a Holocaust victim. Soon, at a Holocaust survivors’ group, she passes the stories off as her own.
My aging mother once told a family gathering about the time she met John Travolta. When I subtly informed her that she was actually recounting my story about such a meeting, she looked shocked: “Oh! Am I remembering your memories?” Eleanor’s deception, though, isn’t a slip of the tongue, a memory glitch, or an inevitable consequence of getting old; it’s an active and purposeful, though spur-of-the-moment, imposture. To what end, we don’t discover until just before the final credits roll.
But more than a twinkly-eyed charlatan, Eleanor is simply not a nice woman. She doles out compliments with the reluctance of Jack Benny forced to leave a restaurant tip. She is acid-tongued and congenitally argumentative. She doesn’t seem to like anyone, apart from her late roommate, Bessie. We’re not surprised that Eleanor’s adult daughter Lisa (Jessica Hecht) would rather put her in a senior-living home than give her a bedroom in her Manhattan flat. So why did kind and sensitive Bessie, the Holocaust survivor, remain Eleanor’s friend for 70 years? By the film’s end, I was still wondering.
Enter NYU journalism major Nina, played with zest and vulnerability by up-and-comer Erin Kellyman. Nina is still in mourning for her recently deceased mother and the lack of hoped-for tenderness from her father. Unaware of Eleanor’s artifice, Nina, attending the Holocaust survivors meeting as an interested nonparticipant, asks Eleanor if she can write an article for her journalism class on what turns out to be the old woman’s stolen valor, “her” Holocaust memories.
Why would such a bold liar agree to the interview when surely she would be found out? Frankly, it’s not believable. Nina’s resultant article attracts not only the attention of the Journalism Department chairman but also of Nina’s father, Roger (Oscar nominee Chiwetel Ejiofor), a famous NY1 TV anchor. Ejiofor lends a credible gravitas to the proceedings—authentic and, ultimately, moving.
Grief! Anger! Survivor’s guilt! The Holocaust! Old age and death! Is there a more fecund field in which to sow the seeds of comedy?
Wait, what?! OK, Sony Pictures Classics and Tristar Pictures technically call the film “comically poignant.” As for the comical parts, yes, there is some humor, much of it dark, as when Eleanor belittles a clueless supermarket stockboy, then later intimates to an elderly neighbor that she made love to the woman’s husband. What’s next: poking sticks at someone in a wheelchair?
As for poignancy, yes, there is some, particularly in the scenes with Nina keening over the loss of her mother, followed by her horror and revulsion when she learns that her elderly friend Eleanor is a serious deceiver.
To be fair: There were quite a few moist eyes in New York’s Sony Screening Room by the time the film ended. Mine weren’t among them, though, and I’m someone who gets weepy over Kars for Kids commercials.
Eleanor the Great is only 98 minutes, but feels longer. Scenes could have been tightened. Anguished dialogue might have been toned down. A few over-the-top emotional scenes might have been subdued to good effect. No one else but Johansson sat in the director’s chair, so it was her call. But early career missteps often help build long-term success.
The film is based on a script by Tory Kamen, her first for a feature film. On its surface, the script is about loss and survival, sadness and hope. It might have been better served than in this production.
It’s clear, though, that Kamen loves New York, as does Manhattan resident Johansson. Thanks to Hélène Louvart, director of photography, the streets and shops of the city have rarely held such allure.
A word about June Squibb, who plays Eleanor. She is immensely appealing as a human being. A sparkle lights her face. Her comic timing is spot on. She’s even generating Oscar buzz for her performance. And she brings enough energy to make someone 30 years her junior feel envious. Her acting in Eleanor might have had better guidance, and the script could have used a firmer editing hand. Those aren’t an actor’s bailiwick. But her natural warmth and skills in front of the camera are undeniable. It’s no wonder that Squibb was a favorite among the crowds at the recent Cannes Film Festival, where Eleanor the Great won several nominations but, unsurprisingly, no awards.
Author Bio:
Mark Orwoll writes about travel, film, and culture for Highbrow Magazine.
For Highbrow Magazine