ELEANOR THE GREAT
Directing: B
Acting: B
Writing: B
Cinematography: B-
Editing: B-
Every day we still have June Squibb with us is a gift. She’ll be 96 years old next month, and as Eleanor the Great was shot in early 2024, she would have been 94 then—the exact age as her character, the title character. Squibb seems to be following in the footsteps of Betty White, who was born 7 years before her, and whose final live action role was in 2018, at the age of 95. It’s amazing these women were, or are, able to keep working at that age.
The thing is, thanks to The Golden Girls, I knew who Betty White was for the last 35 years of her life. I never really knew who June Squibb was until her Oscar-nominated role in Alexander Payne’s 2013 film Nebraska (the only Oscar nomination Squibb ever got, incidentally). I totally forgot she also had a part in one of Payne’s previous films, About Schmidt (2002). Squibb was 84 years old and 73 years old when those two movies were released, respectively. Which is to say: I have only ever known Squibb onscreen as an old lady—albeit a consistently compelling one. It seems worth noting that she has over a hundred acting credits, dating back as far as 1985—when she was 55. She previously worked exclusively in live theater, starting in the late fifties.
The truth is, all of the aforementioned films are better than Eleanor the Great, but that has nothing to do with June Squibb, who is far and away the best thing about it; the film could have easily collapsed under someone else in the lead role. The greatest distinction of Eleanor the Great is actually that it’s the feature directorial debut of Scarlett Johansson, and to put it diplomatically, Johansson has potential but could use some more practice.
Johansson’s status as a superstar can easily overshadow some of the more interesting things about this production, such as how script writer Tory Kamen very loosely based the Eleanor character on her own grandmother, Elinore. It should be stressed, however, that the real-life Elinore never lied about being a Holocaust survivor. That’s something Squibb’s Eleanor does, and it’s the basic premise of the film.
Eleanor the Great is also about grief, though, and as such will have a lot that’s very relatable to those of us who have lost someone very close to us. The story here is often a bit clunky in the telling, but it does have some insightful themes about how, as one character very directly puts it, grief can make us very selfish. It’s often said that everyone deals with grief in their own way, and there is no wrong way, but Eleanor might serve as an argument that there’s at least one wrong way. Maybe don’t sit in on a Holocaust survivors’ support group and tell someone else’s story as your own.
To be fair, every step of the way, we can empathize with the decisions Eleanor makes, even when we know they’re wrong. She lived with her best friend, Bessie (Rita Zohar), as two widows for 11 years before Bessie passes away. When Eleanor’s daughter Lisa (Jessica Hecht) moves her from Florida back to her native New York, Eleanor reluctantly goes to a social event only to get mistaken for someone looking for the Holocaust survivors’ group. Eleanor even starts to apologize when she realizes she’s in the wrong place, but another person in the group, mistaking Eleanor’s apology for simple nervousness, urges her to stay and tell her story. And, she does. Except she tells Bessie’s story.
Knowing this premise, I really expected Eleanor the Great to be about Eleanor getting to know the others in the survivors group—who are cast, incidentally, by real Holocaust survivors. I might even have preferred that. Instead, there’s a young girl sitting in on the group, Nina (an excellent Erin Kellyman), working on a story for her college journalism class. It’s Nina who takes an interest in Eleanor’s story (why none of the other people in the group would be as compelling to her, I’m not sure), and the subsequent story that unfolds is much more about Eleanor and Nina getting to know each other. The standard story arc of conflict and resolution exists between those two.
One of Eleanor the Great’s many implausible details is how Nina’s father, Roger (Chiwetel Ejiofor), happens to be the TV news journalist both Eleanor and Bessie were big fans of. He also happens to be grieving the loss of a loved one, his wife—and thus Nina is grieving the loss of her mother, and this is something over which Nina and Eleanor bond. The resulting complication of their budding friendship is undeniably fascinating, as everything the two of them bond over is sincere and genuine, even though the thing that brought them together in the first place was a pretty significant lie.
Eleanor the Great is a movie unlike any other, I’ll give it that. It’s far from perfect, but there’s a lot to like about it. Certain technical decisions are distracting to the point of taking you out of the movie—such as the staging of Eleanor’s visit to Nina’s class, in which she begins speaking with no formal introduction, and the class applauds after she finishes speaking without any clear indication that’s she done. This sequence plays a lot like a slightly stylized scene in a stage play, and it’s a bit incongruous. There’s a few somewhat baffling choices like this in the movie.
Still, it’s June Squibb who is the glue who holds everything together, and if there is any one reason to see this film, it’s her. Chiwetel Ejiofor is well-established as a great actor but not given a whole lot to showcase it here; Erin Kellyman as Nina is far more memorable. A whole lot of the actors in smaller parts deliver their lines with a bit of an amateur vibe. I guess I’ll give the people who were actual Holocaust survivors a pass on that, but it’s still something that offsets the balance of performance overall.
In the end, Eleanor the Great is about both grief and forgiveness, and it ultimately works thanks to June Squibb, especially once Eleanor has moved to New York and is an amusing crank about this new phase in her life. If you’re a fan of Squibb, you’ll have a good time—and you’ll want to have a few tissues handy.
Eleanor and her charming little sucker, Nina.
Overall: B