Eleanor The Great: How We Grieve and the Stories We Tell Propels Gentle Indie Dramedy

By Karen Gordon

Rating: B

Scarlett Johansson makes her directorial debut with Eleanor the Great, a gentle indie dramedy that walks lightly but deals with a lot of complex themes.

June Squibb stars as 94-year-old widow Eleanor. For 11 years, Eleanor has been sharing an apartment in Florida with her also-widowed lifelong friend Bessie (Rita Zohar). The two are living independently and taking care of each other with great affection and humour.

From what we see, Eleanor is a bit of a mischievous character. The quieter Bessie is a Holocaust survivor and is still haunted by what happened to her family. She shares with Eleanor her stories and the questions that have plagued her throughout her life.

When Bessie suddenly dies, Eleanor’s life is upended. She can’t really live alone. So, she moves to live with her divorced daughter Lisa (Jessica Hecht) and her university-aged grandson Max (Will Price) in their Manhattan apartment.

Eleanor can be charming, but she has a whole other side to her. She has a tough shell and can be manipulative. She can’t seem to stop herself from making digs at people, and Lisa in particular, who is a sweet person and bears it about as well as she can. But this new living arrangement isn’t going to be easy.

Lisa has thought ahead about how to keep her mother busy and maybe help her build up a new group of friends. She signed her up for some courses at the Jewish Community Centre.

Instead of going into the assigned class, Eleanor ends up in a support group for Holocaust survivors. She’s the newbie, but the group also has a guest: Nina (Erin Kellyman), a journalism student who has come to listen and observe.

Realizing her error, Eleanor is going to leave. People mistake her discomfort for emotional reluctance and encourage her to stay and feel safe sharing her story. Eleanor makes a split-second decision and starts to tell Bessie’s story as if it was her own.

This a deceit of course, but we can see that, for Eleanor, this is a way of dealing with her grief for Bessie, keeping her close in the only way she can. Still, it’s fraught: the story gets her a lot of attention, which at least for the first day, isn’t a dilemma for her. She's not necessarily going to make a second appearance in the group.

Before she can wrangle with what she’s just done, Nina approaches her. She’s taken by Eleanor and wants to talk further and potentially write a story about her.

Nina is going through her own grief. Her mother has recently died of cancer, and her broadcast journalist father Roger (Chiwetel Ejiofor) has been distant. She’s not always able to mask her sadness.

Eleanor keeps telling more of Bessie’s story, which gives them a reason to spend time together. Nina’s late mother was Jewish, and so there’s another layer of interest for her. Of course there’s a deceit there, but Eleanor doesn’t really seem to think deeply about it. There’s a natural connection between them that they both enjoy, and she focuses on that.

This+ can’t last and ultimately Eleanor’s actions trigger consequences for a number of the characters in the film.

Eleanor the Great is a small-scale film with depth and relatable themes: grief, loss, identity, family among them. The film has some flaws that lessen its emotional impact but there is admirable work here all around.

It’s a particularly interesting project for Johansson’s first film. She has chosen to do something with no flash but a lot of heart, and that relies on her ability to find the right tone.

And that she does. Johansson directs with a light hand, and shows restraint, refraining from letting the film fall into some natural traps of melodrama or sentimentality that would have undermined it. Still, Nina ends up being the heart and soul of the film. Credit for that goes to Kellyman’s quiet and thoughtful performance.

Johansson's sensitivity to the material also shows in how she deals with the life experiences of Bessie, who dies in the film’s first few minutes. Her story, the one that Eleanor tells as if it were her own, makes her a silent presence in the film.

There’s a sensitivity there to making sure the film isn’t using this as simply a narrative device. She makes sure that the experiences that the Holocaust victims and their families are dealing with carries appropriate weight and dignity.

Johansson says she wasn’t intending to direct until she came across this script, and what she reveals here is a talent as a director for handling material that requires a thoughtful approach.

Eleanor the Great isn’t a flawless film or as impactful as it might have been. But it is quietly rewarding.

Eleanor The Great. Directed by Scarlett Johansson. Starring June Squibb, Chiwetel Ejiofor, Erin Kellyman, Jessica Hecht, and Will Price. In theatres September 26.

Wait? Where you going? Read out interview with the director and stars of Eleanor the Great