‘Eleanor,’ gee, I think you’re (not so) swell
Having risen to become one of the preeminent actors of her generation, Scarlett Johansson now ventures into directing with a tonally complex endeavor that explores aging and the Holocaust. It’s dubbed “Eleanor the Great,” but the only thing exceptional about it is its charismatic star, the incomparable June Squibb.
She’s awesome as Eleanor Morgenstein, a New York nonagenarian pretending to be someone she’s not by appropriating the story of her recently deceased roommate, Bessie (Rita Zohar), a Polish Holocaust survivor. Through a lot of movie hocus pocus on the part of screenwriter Tory Kamen, Eleanor becomes a local cause célèbre due in part to a contrived friendship with the 19-year-old daughter (Erin Kellyman) of one of New York’s most popular morning-show hosts, Roger Davis (Chiwetel Ejiofor). Natch, everyone is about to wind up with egg on their faces in advance of an even more predictable kumbaya.
Absent the compelling presence of Squibb, “Eleanor the Great” would be both borderline offensive and a narrative cheat. But she bails out Johansson a dozen times over by exuding enough Squibb-distinctive charm that you almost forgive Eleanor’s despicable deception. Not to mention the idiocy and gullibility of the people around her, who never bother to verify any of the “facts” that Eleanor relays about the horrors she experienced at the hands of her barbaric captors. And did I mention this is a quasi-comedy?
What saves it – barely – is the relationship that evolves between Eleanor and Kellyman’s Nina, the young NYU student she encounters during a Holocaust survivors meeting at the Jewish Community Center. Eleanor attends to appease her recently divorced daughter, Lisa (Jessica Hecht), with whom she’s temporarily cohabitating in the wake of Bessie’s death. The idea was for Eleanor to participate in a singing class, but here she is, down the hall, with the Holocaust group, largely consisting of actual survivors. When called upon to give testimony, Eleanor, not wanting to appear a fraud, panics and claims Bessie’s life account as her own, even though she’s not even a born-and-bred Jew. She’s merely a transplanted Iowan who married a man of the faith in 1953. But Nina takes her at her word.
This enables Johansson to fill the majority of her film with sweet moments derived from Eleanor and Nina’s burgeoning friendship, as they commiserate over their shared grief. For Eleanor, it’s Bessie, and for Nina, it’s the recent loss of her Jewish mother. Both women are emotionally stuck and feeling alone because the people closest to them refuse to acknowledge their intense pain.
What’s intriguing is that the vast age difference never matters. They are kindred souls, and that bond helps them both regain their mojo and impart a valuable lesson on the importance of expressing and sharing sorrow. But Johansson errs in not allowing Eleanor to be honest with Nina. Clearly, Eleanor’s “story” is not what binds them, but Johansson and Kamen don’t seem to grasp that, thus permitting the ruse to persist.
You’d have to have just fallen off the turnip truck to not realize where this is all headed. And Johansson’s ham-handed presentation makes the “big reveal” all the more ridiculous. Worse, is how glaringly she wastes the talent of Ejiofor, who’s given little to do beyond portraying the selfish dad refusing to look beyond his own sadness and recognize how deeply his daughter is hurting. Ejiofor does a lot with a little, but it’s a role so slight any actor could play it in their sleep.
To her credit, Johannson makes maximum use of her native New York, capturing the local color of a city where brashness is king. For instance, Eleanor offers “my condolences” to her Uber driver after learning he’s from Staten Island. She also has the sound judgment to stand back and let Squibb take control, trusting her to elicit every ounce of compassion for a hard-to-empathize-with character who embraces a lie and runs with it.
Squibb reciprocates by rendering Eleanor both a straight-shooter and a disingenuous opportunist exploiting Nina’s need for understanding. Funny, cantankerous and incomparably , Squibb is always a pure delight, even here. She works wonders, but with Johansson calling the shots, “Eleanor” ain’t so great.
Movie review
Eleanor the Great
Rated: PG-13 for some language, thematic elements, suggestive references
Cast: June Squibb, Erin Kellyman, Chiwetel Ejiofor, Jessica Hecht and Rita Zohar
Director: Scarlett Johansson
Writer: Tory Kamen
Runtime: 98 minutes
Where: In theaters Sept. 26 (limited)
Grade: C
