Chris Knipp
09-24-2025, 11:54 AM
http://www.chrisknipp.com/images/%20etg.jpg
SCARLETT JOHANSSON: ELEANOR THE GREAT (2025)
A terrible deception taken too lightly
Scarlett Johansson, whose mother is Jewish, has chosen a unusual theme for her debut as a director: an elderly woman who pretends to be a Holocaust survivor. This is a tricky, borderline distasteful subject whatever the context and despite the presence of 95-year-old star June Squibb, with her unquestionable skill at delivering one-liners. The film takes her character into territory where one-liners no longer have a place. They work fine when she's putting down a dim-witted supermarket stock boy who doesn't appreciate the superiority of Kosher dill pickles. But thereafter she falls into what is obviously a deeply unwise (and unfunny) deception.
An initial problematic feature of the film is that June Squibb, though in real life a Jewish convert, doesn't seem Jewish. This is theoretically okay because the character of Eleanor as it turns out herself converted in the Fifties. But this is revealed to us only three fourths of the way through. Maybe I just don't understand this movie or what it is trying to do. But this is another thing that doesn't quite work. Is she perhaps only even pretending to be Jewish, as well? I had the feeling that June Squibb, the actress, would just do anything they told her to do. Maybe she should have said, Wait a minute. But needless to say, at 95, she's lucky to be working. Too bad that what may be her swansong is this misguided film.
Eleanor, Squibb's character, is a Jewish widow from the Bronx who has long been living in Florida with her best friend Bessie (Rita Zohar), also a widow, who really is a Holocaust survivor. When Bessie dies, Eleanor moves back north to the Manhattan apartment of her divorced daughter (Jessica Hecht) and teenage son (Will Price). She will have nothing to do there so her daughter takes her to the local Jewish center where she inadvertently, incautiously, or just because screenwriter Tory Kamen needs it, joins a Holocaust survivor support group.
When asked to tell her story, a glib liar, Eleanor simply impersonates the late Bessie, saying she came from Poland and longs for her lost brother and repeating many details Bessie told her. And only her: for one point made is that Bessie was never able to experience the carharthis of telling her story to anyone but Eleanor. The fact that, unlike Bessie, Eleanor has no accent she smooths over to a questioner (not during the meetings) by just saying, "I've been here a long time."
Fair enough, but she gets in deeper and deeper - particularly since, from the start, there's college journalism student Nina (Erin Kellyman) sitting in on the survivor group meetings as an observer. Nina is half black, half Jewish (Kellyman is half Irish and half Afro-Jamaican). Her Jewish mother died very recently and she's still intensely grieving. And her father, in a too-god coincidence, is none other than Roger (Chiwetel Ejiofor), who was Bessie and Eleanor's favorite TV newscaster. Nina naively falls under the spell of Eleanor's holocaust survivor impersonation and wants to make her the heart of the article she is writing.
It gets better because Nina shares her project with her father, and Roger wants to put Eleanor's Holocaust story up on the nightly news. Does all this sound a bit too good, or too terrible, to be true? The chance connection of Nina with Eleanor through her father's being the old lady's favorite TV newsman certainly feels very contrived, alhought it's outweighed by the embarrassment of Eleanor's deeply risky deception.
First-timer Tory Kamen's screenplay is thus ill judged in several ways. The supposedly humorous lead character winds up being too morally dubious for laughs. Kamen hasn't recognized how serious the Holocaust theme is. This was also true of Benigni's 1997 Life Is Beautiful. (Benini had a lighter touch and a reputation to protect him, but personally I was horrified by the light, humorous tone of his film.) Johansson's film has no control or consistency of tone. In the end Roger's nighttime news story explains Eleanor's interrupted Bat Mitzvah and her lies. It turns out that grief - Eleanor's for Bessie, Roger's for his wife and Nina's mother (who Nina has given a weepy speech about at the failed Bat Mitzvah) - explains and excuses anything and everything. Everybody's got grief, so everybody understands. From the standpoint of the viewer, that's too easy.
Eleanor gets caught, but her comeuppance is (understandably) softened. Ultimately everyone seems to forgive her. Old girls will be old girls. Another mistake is to saddle a 94-year-old with this kind of issue.
Suddenly after a minute of deep embarrassment, tempered by its subject's obvious love of being in the limelight no matter what, Eleanor turns out now to be living in a retirement home, safely enjoying the rich desserts. How she went from adamant opposition to such an institution to being just fine with it is another thing that doesn't quite wash.
Despite tonal unevenness that Johansson ought to have ironed out, what the film does have is some nice performances. Chiwetel Ejiofor, as Roger, does a great job with the disconnected dad and the slick TV news personality. Several of the Jewish center personalities feel solid and authentic, as is Stephen Singer as a rabbi. Of course June Squibb is confident. But she's been given dubious and wildly uneven material. That is the beginning and the end of this story: it is misjudged. Nothing can save the unfunny central concept of the screenplay. Eleanor the Great is an uncomfortable oddity that cannot be recommended.
Eleanor the Great, 98 mins., premiered at Cannes, surprisingly, in the Un Certain Regard section, Jun. 2025. It premiered again at Toronto Sept. 8. It will release in the US Sept. 26. Metacritic (https://www.metacritic.com/movie/eleanor-the-great/) rating: 51%.
SCARLETT JOHANSSON: ELEANOR THE GREAT (2025)
A terrible deception taken too lightly
Scarlett Johansson, whose mother is Jewish, has chosen a unusual theme for her debut as a director: an elderly woman who pretends to be a Holocaust survivor. This is a tricky, borderline distasteful subject whatever the context and despite the presence of 95-year-old star June Squibb, with her unquestionable skill at delivering one-liners. The film takes her character into territory where one-liners no longer have a place. They work fine when she's putting down a dim-witted supermarket stock boy who doesn't appreciate the superiority of Kosher dill pickles. But thereafter she falls into what is obviously a deeply unwise (and unfunny) deception.
An initial problematic feature of the film is that June Squibb, though in real life a Jewish convert, doesn't seem Jewish. This is theoretically okay because the character of Eleanor as it turns out herself converted in the Fifties. But this is revealed to us only three fourths of the way through. Maybe I just don't understand this movie or what it is trying to do. But this is another thing that doesn't quite work. Is she perhaps only even pretending to be Jewish, as well? I had the feeling that June Squibb, the actress, would just do anything they told her to do. Maybe she should have said, Wait a minute. But needless to say, at 95, she's lucky to be working. Too bad that what may be her swansong is this misguided film.
Eleanor, Squibb's character, is a Jewish widow from the Bronx who has long been living in Florida with her best friend Bessie (Rita Zohar), also a widow, who really is a Holocaust survivor. When Bessie dies, Eleanor moves back north to the Manhattan apartment of her divorced daughter (Jessica Hecht) and teenage son (Will Price). She will have nothing to do there so her daughter takes her to the local Jewish center where she inadvertently, incautiously, or just because screenwriter Tory Kamen needs it, joins a Holocaust survivor support group.
When asked to tell her story, a glib liar, Eleanor simply impersonates the late Bessie, saying she came from Poland and longs for her lost brother and repeating many details Bessie told her. And only her: for one point made is that Bessie was never able to experience the carharthis of telling her story to anyone but Eleanor. The fact that, unlike Bessie, Eleanor has no accent she smooths over to a questioner (not during the meetings) by just saying, "I've been here a long time."
Fair enough, but she gets in deeper and deeper - particularly since, from the start, there's college journalism student Nina (Erin Kellyman) sitting in on the survivor group meetings as an observer. Nina is half black, half Jewish (Kellyman is half Irish and half Afro-Jamaican). Her Jewish mother died very recently and she's still intensely grieving. And her father, in a too-god coincidence, is none other than Roger (Chiwetel Ejiofor), who was Bessie and Eleanor's favorite TV newscaster. Nina naively falls under the spell of Eleanor's holocaust survivor impersonation and wants to make her the heart of the article she is writing.
It gets better because Nina shares her project with her father, and Roger wants to put Eleanor's Holocaust story up on the nightly news. Does all this sound a bit too good, or too terrible, to be true? The chance connection of Nina with Eleanor through her father's being the old lady's favorite TV newsman certainly feels very contrived, alhought it's outweighed by the embarrassment of Eleanor's deeply risky deception.
First-timer Tory Kamen's screenplay is thus ill judged in several ways. The supposedly humorous lead character winds up being too morally dubious for laughs. Kamen hasn't recognized how serious the Holocaust theme is. This was also true of Benigni's 1997 Life Is Beautiful. (Benini had a lighter touch and a reputation to protect him, but personally I was horrified by the light, humorous tone of his film.) Johansson's film has no control or consistency of tone. In the end Roger's nighttime news story explains Eleanor's interrupted Bat Mitzvah and her lies. It turns out that grief - Eleanor's for Bessie, Roger's for his wife and Nina's mother (who Nina has given a weepy speech about at the failed Bat Mitzvah) - explains and excuses anything and everything. Everybody's got grief, so everybody understands. From the standpoint of the viewer, that's too easy.
Eleanor gets caught, but her comeuppance is (understandably) softened. Ultimately everyone seems to forgive her. Old girls will be old girls. Another mistake is to saddle a 94-year-old with this kind of issue.
Suddenly after a minute of deep embarrassment, tempered by its subject's obvious love of being in the limelight no matter what, Eleanor turns out now to be living in a retirement home, safely enjoying the rich desserts. How she went from adamant opposition to such an institution to being just fine with it is another thing that doesn't quite wash.
Despite tonal unevenness that Johansson ought to have ironed out, what the film does have is some nice performances. Chiwetel Ejiofor, as Roger, does a great job with the disconnected dad and the slick TV news personality. Several of the Jewish center personalities feel solid and authentic, as is Stephen Singer as a rabbi. Of course June Squibb is confident. But she's been given dubious and wildly uneven material. That is the beginning and the end of this story: it is misjudged. Nothing can save the unfunny central concept of the screenplay. Eleanor the Great is an uncomfortable oddity that cannot be recommended.
Eleanor the Great, 98 mins., premiered at Cannes, surprisingly, in the Un Certain Regard section, Jun. 2025. It premiered again at Toronto Sept. 8. It will release in the US Sept. 26. Metacritic (https://www.metacritic.com/movie/eleanor-the-great/) rating: 51%.