Review: Eleanor the Great — Movies for the Rest of Us with Bill Newcott

Eleanor the Great  

⭐️ ⭐️ ⭐️

Rating: PG-13

Run Time: 1 hour 38 minutes

Stars: June Squibb, Chiwetel Ejiofor, Erin Kellyman

Writer: Tory Kamen

Director: Scarlett Johansson

Reviewed at the Toronto International Film Festival

There’s nothing better for a first-time director than a first-rate cast—and for her initial stint behind the camera, Scarlett Johansson lucks out with a company headed by everyone’s favorite late bloomer, June Squibb.

An Oscar-nominated supporting actress (2014’s Nebraska) who’s been in some 100 films and TV shows dating back to 1985, June Squibb broke through last year with her first leading role — at age 94 — in the acclaimed comedy Thelma. Now she stars in this comedic drama as a woman who loses her best friend, Bessie (Rita Zohar), a Holocaust survivor, and finds herself telling Bessie’s tragic stories to strangers as if they were her own.

As a comedy, Eleanor treads some mighty problematic ground. I mean, what could be more reprehensible than falsely passing yourself off as a victim of genocide? But Eleanor doesn’t start out to misrepresent herself: Following the sudden death of her dear friend, she’s abruptly moved to Manhattan by her well-meaning but distant daughter (Jessica Hecht). Plopped down into the local Jewish Community Center for what amounts to elder day care, Eleanor wanders into a meeting of Holocaust survivors where she is, understandably, mistaken for one of them.

Asked to tell her story, off-guard Eleanor fumbles her way into Bessie’s often-told narrative, galvanizing the group — along with a visiting college journalism student named Nina (Erin Kellyman). Mourning the recent passing of her mother, Nina is perhaps a bit too ready to accept the unsubstantiated claims of a sweet grandmother figure.

The two bond almost immediately, intensifying Eleanor’s unease at having adopted a notoriously faked backstory. Also, it turns out Nina is no ordinary journalism student: Her father (12 Years a Slave Oscar nominee Chiwetel Ejiofor) is New York’s leading TV news anchor — a guy who knows a good story when he sees one, and who wants to feature the Holocaust survivor version of Eleanor on his program.

Working from a multilayered script by first-time feature film writer Tory Kamen, Johansson labors at times to balance the heaviness of the material with the raucous persona of Eleanor, a woman portrayed by Squibb as a sometimes sneering, often verbally abusive, yet ultimately vulnerable victim of her own emotional barriers. Happily, Johansson allows Squibb lots of time to fill in the blanks of her character, capturing moments of indecision, regret, and swelling sentiment.

As young Nina, Kellyman exudes the kind of youthful exuberance that can often blind youngsters to unpleasant realities. Perhaps the film’s most successful relationship is the one Johansson crafts between Nina and her damaged but devoted dad, a man so hollowed out by loss he’s reduced his interactions with his daughter to little more than a business relationship.

There are, to be sure, laughs in Eleanor the Great, but the film is a comedy primarily in the Shakespearian sense: In the end, all’s well that ends well. Before that happy conclusion, though, Johansson & Company don’t shy away from cranking their characters — and audience — through an emotional wringer.