THE STORY – A 94-year-old Floridian woman strikes up an unlikely friendship with a 19-year-old student in New York City.
THE CAST – June Squibb, Chiwetel Ejiofor, Jessica Hecht, Erin Kellyman, Will Price & Rita Zohar
THE TEAM – Scarlett Johansson (Director) & Tory Kamen (Writer)
THE RUNNING TIME – 98 Minutes
Best friends Eleanor (June Squibb) and Bessie (Eita Zohar) have lived together for many years, enjoying their retirement after their husbands passed away. When Bessie passes away, too, Eleanor moves to New York City to live with her daughter Lisa (Jessica Hecht) and grandson Max (Will Price). They have their own lives, though, leaving Eleanor without any companionship for most of the day. Going to a singing group at the local Jewish Community Center at Lisa’s suggestion, Eleanor gets waylaid, instead ending up at a Holocaust survivors’ support group. When the group pleads with her to join them and share, she shares Bessie’s story, claiming it as her own. When college journalism student Nina (Erin Kellyman) wants to write a paper on Eleanor after being moved by her story, Eleanor agrees to meet with her, and the two become friends. But how long will Eleanor be able to keep up her lie before Nina finds out?
With “Eleanor the Great,” Scarlett Johansson seamlessly slides into the director’s chair, directing the great June Squibb to the performance of a lifetime. Johansson approaches the screenplay’s tricky subjects with a great deal of sensitivity, working with Squibb to paint a portrait of a woman who does something unforgivable and who nonetheless deserves forgiveness. Despite her sweet appearance, Eleanor is hurting deeply, and while that doesn’t excuse her actions, Squibb makes her motivations completely understandable, no matter how twisted they might be. Alternately hilarious and heartfelt – and always just a little bit naughty in that patented Squibb style – this represents the actress’s absolute best at 95 years old. Few actresses get this kind of opportunity at that age, and it’s no accident that this performance comes with another actress as director. Johansson has always had a knack for playing characters processing intense, complex emotions (“Lost in Translation” and “Marriage Story” first among them), and she guides Squibb towards her most subtle performance to date. Tory Kamen’s screenplay feels like it was written specifically for Squibb, with lots of old lady-styled sass that plays like a less vulgar version of her breakthrough role in Alexander Payne’s “Nebraska.” While it’s not surprising that Hollywood has asked her to return to that well over and over again since her Oscar nomination for that film, it’s heartening to see her finally stretch the boundaries of the “June Squibb role” with something this nuanced.
While the film is centered around her, Squibb is far from the only performer doing noteworthy work here. Kellyman is a revelation, working through Nina’s grief over losing her mother in ways adjacent to, but never exactly the same as Squibb does with June. The two women are in dialogue throughout the film, in the most literal ways as well as more thematic ones. Both women are going through grief in different ways. Eleanor has lost her closest confidante and feels all alone in the world, while Nina is supposed to be going through the grieving process with her father (Chiwetel Ejiofor), who has instead shut down and shut her out. Losing a parent and losing a best friend/roommate ultimately aren’t the same thing, so the film treats their journeys differently, with Nina’s openness to deeply feeling her grief making for a stark contrast to Eleanor’s avoidance. Kellyman knows that quiet tears say more than heaving sobs ever could and calibrates her performance appropriately. Ejiofor effectively holds back his emotions until a key moment near the film’s conclusion, delivering the film’s message with grace and strength. In the film’s last act, Zohar becomes its secret weapon, as Bessie takes ownership of her story of survival in a heartrending scene that proves that watching a talented actor work through a character’s painful memories can be just as powerful as staging a full flashback. Awards bodies sure to award Squibb at year’s end would do well to remember her name, as well; she’s the definition of a superlative supporting actress.
Most coming-of-age films focus on young people, usually teenagers. Our teen years are full of great change, but so are our later years. Senior citizens have to come of age, too, as they grapple with decaying bodies and losing their nearest and dearest on a regular basis. Perhaps the most beautiful thing about “Eleanor The Great” is that it gives its titular character grace as she goes on her coming-of-age journey. Eleanor knows better but acts selfishly out of a need for connection. Her actions will surely rub many audience members wrong, but the film encourages empathy without letting her off the hook entirely. The film offers a moral continuum, with Nina’s open acceptance of her grief on one end and her father’s closed-off denial of it on the other. Eleanor stands somewhere in between them, both honoring Bessie by sharing her story (which Bessie expressed regret for not having shared with more people in her lifetime) and disrespecting her by passing off Bessie’s story as her own. The film doesn’t let Eleanor off the hook for her actions, choosing to model the very behavior it hopes to encourage in its audience: Leading with empathy. That can be difficult to do, but so is living with the grief of losing the person who means the most to you. What “Eleanor the Great” so beautifully reminds us, through Johansson’s sensitive direction and the nuanced performances, is that those dealing with grief are most worthy of our empathy. Johansson puts nary a foot wrong her first time in the director’s chair (overusing Dustin O’Halloran’s admittedly lovely score is her worst offense), so hopefully, her subsequent films will approach similarly thorny topics with this much confidence.
