Scarlett Johansson’s directorial debut, Eleanor the Great, works the best when it focuses on itself as a character study as well as on a close but deceiving friendship. However, it fumbles and doesn’t quite dive deep enough into the complex issues it raises on living out a lie, growing old, loneliness, and friendship. It certainly gets too schmaltzy in the final third with a simplistic message of “Always tell the truth”, as the film could have benefited from not aiming too hard to be a crowd-pleaser. In fact, if it wasn’t for the wonderful performance of June Squibb, there wouldn’t be too much of a draw to this film due to how dry and evasive it is in the human complexity it attempts to explore.
The film opens with Eleanor (Squibb), a 95-year-old Jewish woman who is roommate with her best friend Bessie (Rita Zohar) in Florida. The two are very close; they open up with each other, go on walks, and debate a young grocery clerk about going to the backroom to check on kosher pickle inventory. Sadly, Bessie ends up passing away, which, of course, leaves Eleanor emotionally distraught. Eleanor ends up returning to New York, where she ends up living with her daughter, Lisa (Jessica Hecht), and her grandson, Max (Will Price). Eventually, Eleanor ends up moving into an elderly center of fellow Jewish tenants, where she gets to meet some Holocaust survivors. This resonates with Eleonor considering Bessie was also a Holocaust survivor, and she opened up a lot about harrowing experiences and personal traumas throughout their friendship.
Courtesy Sony Pictures
Even though Eleanor is old enough to be a Holocaust survivor herself, she was born and raised in Des Moines, Iowa. Through her own loneliness, Eleanor ends up telling Bessie’s survival stories in great detail as if they were her own. She ends up developing a friendship with Nina (Erin Kellyman), a 19-year-old who is majoring in journalism and who is also grieving from the loss of her mother, and she holds a lot of emotional distance with her father, Roger (Chiwetel Ejiofor), who works as a TV news anchor for Channel 1 news in New York City.
Johansson puts an earnest sense of humanism and sincerity into the staging of Eleonore and Nina. Each time they are on screen, you feel their friendship ignite, and the friendship scenes are certainly the finest part of the film. You feel two women from very opposite ages emotionally connect and open up to one another on various topics that range from grief to loneliness and sexuality. Eleanor states even at an elderly age, she still thinks about sex as Nina opens up about being gay. The movie holds shades of an Alexander Payne film, though it’s not quite as visually impressive, and it’s more pedestrian in approach. It’s clear Johansson is exploring friendship and the way we grieve, but the result ends up feeling contrived. The film rationalizes Eleanor’s deception, and things are resolved way too quickly. Sadly, all the misunderstandings feel trite, and the conclusion is predictable.
Courtesy Sony Pictures
It’s rather disappointing considering Squibb is always a treasure to watch on screen. Weather it’s in Alexander Payne films like About Schmidt and her Oscar nominated performance in Nebraska, or last year’s Thelma. Yet, her performance isn’t enough to anchor the film away from its bland and dry approach. She truly does her best with the material, but once the writing becomes more rudimentary, the authenticity eventually derails. The film rationalizes the deception of lying about the holocaust, and the consequences to Eleanor’s actions feel hurried and the pathos feel unearned. In Payne’s material, there is always complexity, and you always feel the flaws of the characters, and the hope never feels manipulating as it does here. Eleanor the Great is an admirable effort by Johansson in her debut outing that is an original script by Tory Kamen, though it doesn’t quite reach its potential. There is certainly some sincerity to the film, and its film with many sensibilities that hold promise, but you just know it could be better.
Eleanor the Great is now playing in theaters!
Sounds like a movie that almost works but falls a bit flat