ELEANOR THE GREAT – Review by April Neale
Scarlett Johansson makes a bold feature directing debut with Eleanor the Great, a prickly, poignant dramedy anchored by June Squibb in a role that defies the usual saintly-bubbie mold. It’s a film about grief, memory, and the dangerous comfort of borrowed stories. This is an uneasy premise given how severe the “white lie” is that Eleanor tells, yet Johansson tackles it with surprising assurance as a visual storyteller.
Eleanor Morgenstein (Squibb), an Iowa transplant who married a nice Jewish boy long ago, made New York her home and shared a lifetime of friendship with Bessie (Rita Zohar). After Bessie’s sudden death, Eleanor drifts, her daughter Lisa (Jessica Hecht) and grandson Max (Will Price) bringing her back to the city. Lonely and searching for connection, Eleanor begins recounting Bessie’s harrowing Holocaust survival story as her own, a lie that slips into community circles, catches the ear of aspiring journalist Nina (Erin Kellyman), and eventually this big little lie spirals into what could potentially be a viral media moment.
The ethical tightrope here is unmistakable: Can Eleanor’s loneliness excuse her appropriation of another woman’s trauma? First-time screenwriter Tory Kamen sketches the dilemma and leans on grief and loss as the explanation to bestow our heroine forgiveness with disarming speed, thanks to the love surrounding her by her immediate family and the pull she has on an aspiring journalism student. What begins as a small, well-meaning fib spirals after Eleanor meets Nina, our NYU student still reeling from her mother’s death and struggling with her distant, emotionally shuttered father (Chiwetel Ejiofor), a local news anchor. Nina recognizes the power of Eleanor’s “story” and urges her to share it publicly. Soon, Eleanor is embraced by a circle of Holocaust survivors and propelled into the media spotlight, as her lie blooms beyond her control until it inevitably collapses.
What steadies all of this particularly awkward situation is Squibb. At 95, she delivers a performance as sharp as it is vulnerable. Her relationship with her harried daughter, tender moments with her grandson, and her personality alive once more opposite Kellyman. The two share a spiky, odd-couple chemistry that at times recalls Harold and Maude, their nights out and heart-to-hearts about loss far richer than the contrived lie that binds them. Kellyman more than holds her own, grounding Nina’s grief while giving Squibb the space to step in and out of advisory roles and a tender shoulder to lean upon.
Johansson, working with cinematographer Hélène Louvart (La Chimera), lets New York become a character in its own right, bathing Squibb’s late-life reinvention in warmth and light. The film may sidestep its most obvious moral questions, but Johansson’s command of balancing humor, melancholy, and moral discomfort marks an auspicious debut. It’s quite exciting to see an actor step into the role of directing a film with such command and competence.
Eleanor the Great doesn’t entirely resolve its central quandary, but it does craft a resonant portrait of flawed people fumbling toward connection. With Squibb and Kellyman at its center, Johansson finds grace in imperfection, making this unlikely buddy story both uneasy and unexpectedly moving.
