Scarlett Johansson finally steps behind the camera and what she produces is the Dear Evan Hansen of Holocaust survivor dramas.
I feel like it is important to acknowledge that upfront, as it speaks to exactly what to expect from such a stark misfire of a movie as Eleanor the Great. Just like with Dear Evan Hansen it takes a very blunt and tone-deaf hand to difficult subject matter it is ill-equipped to reckon with and attempts to impart some meaningless moral arc for a pretty egregiously selfish protagonist by cloaking them in the stolen trauma of another person (a dead person at that). I can’t tell whether substituting suicide for the Holocaust is a worse or just lateral move, but making sweet old June Squibb the nexus of it feels like the crueler choice.
She plays Eleanor Morgenstein, a woman in her nineties who moves back to New York from retirement in Florida when her roommate and best friend Bessie (Rita Zohar), a Holocaust survivor, passes away. Living now with her daughter Lisa (Jessica Hecht), too busy with work to look after her full time, a lonely Eleanor while visiting a Jewish Community Centre (she had married into and converted to Judaism), accidentally is invited into a support group for Holocaust survivors and taken in by the prospect of community passes off Bessie’s story of survival as her own, grabbing the attention of a half-Jewish journalism student Nina (Erin Kellyman), with whom she forms a fast friendship.
It shouldn't require explaining why invoking Holocaust survival so trivially as a mere device in the personal growth of someone who didn't go through that trauma -reaping the apparent 'social benefits' of it- is a deeply problematic premise. Johansson spends a chunk of the film at a crossroads between treating this baffling predicament as a serious disgrace or an innocent farce, though as she dips her toes quite brazenly into both she is sure to frame Eleanor in a sympathetic light. In spite of her faults we are meant to relate to her need for friendship and understanding, weaponizing Squibb's endearingly frank charms to that end.
But the saccharine emotional manipulation is so stark that it barely has any effect, and you're left feeling sorry for Squibb -who plays the part fine to her usual standards- for the cinematic elder abuse inflicted on her by the script. There isn't a genuine beat to this movie. From the nebulous estrangement between Eleanor and Lisa to the parallel relationship of misunderstanding between Nina and her news anchor father Roger (Chiwetel Ejiofor), whose flaw like Lisa's is the 90s staple that he works too much- everything is thematically hackneyed and artificial. Obviously of course it is a point of bonding for Eleanor and Nina, as Eleanor continues her fiction while assuming a kindly mentor role for Nina, reconnecting her with her Jewish heritage, and of course keeping everything a secret from her daughter, until inevitably all will be revealed in a devastating dramatic fashion.
The handling of the story is poor enough, but Johansson’s directing also leaves quite a bit to be desired. There is certainly some competency on display, but few thoughtful choices beyond that -the editing and compositions seem strictly utilitarian, every reverse shot and reaction comes at precisely the right moment. Even still though, there are bits that are jarring -such as a messy cut from Eleanor visiting Bessie in the hospital to Eleanor sitting on the beach alone under sad music as sudden communication that Bessie has died. It feels brazenly amateurish, as do the ways a couple other reveals are executed. While Johansson might be better with actors, a few of them seem lost too -Squibb sadly on a few occasions among them. But it is Ejiofor in particular who can’t seem to muster up any investment for his dull part, and Johansson doesn’t seem to help him much when it comes to his eventual key scene.
The efforts at lightness and comic relief are just as forced as everything else. Squibb's irreverent meanness, usually a likeable feature of her performances, is in the context of her character here less charming. And the multi-generational divide between Eleanor and Nina when played for jokes is just rather rote. Most of the time though their relationship is overly quaint. Though Nina is a grad student, her interview style with Eleanor and the contours of how that relationship develops feels like she's an elementary student connecting with an elder in a 'very special' family sitcom episode. Squibb and Kellyman have an okay chemistry, but it doesn't develop into anything interesting in the shadow of their personal dramas -both real and fake in the case of Eleanor.
Nina's complex can barely be called a focus of the movie for how tangential and awkward it is -ironic given it likely mirrors more than Eleanor's Johansson's own experience of Jewish identity. Perhaps then it is revealing that there is nothing much to be made of it, that Nina’s own inherited diasporic trauma is substantively so empty. It’s perhaps a mite more genuine than Eleanor though, who despite being a Jewish convert for decades feels often like a poser in her proudly reciting stories from the Torah back to a rabbi and her comments to Bessie and others about what “our people” endured coming off like that Seinfeld dentist played by Bryan Cranston who casually converted to Judaism for the jokes. And this is not the intent of the character, who Johansson clearly wants to communicate is earnest in her adopted identity. Likewise that she is earnest in her need for her friendship with Nina and sense of belonging. Squibb does relate that on a few occasions -notably in the inevitable liar revealed beat- but the clumsy manner in which it is delivered obscures those intentions and makes the difficult subject matter feel inappropriately lightweight. Once again it is apt to compare to Dear Evan Hansen and the botching of a tone the creators clearly have no idea how to respectfully address. And of course that key thing that we see in Eleanor’s supposed redemption as well, where in spite of efforts to atone she is still permitted some level of ownership over her friend’s narrative. Bessie’s Holocaust trauma is only important to the story in how it effects Eleanor. What matters is not the stories of the other survivors she meets or the Jewish diaspora writ large, it is their ultimate acceptance of her.
The efforts at schmaltziness in Eleanor the Great can be a lot to bear, especially near the end where the film more vividly evokes Holocaust imagery in a cheap grab for emotion. Nobody comes out of the film strong. For Kellyman, what ought to be a breakout movie for a promising young actress is overshadowed by her necessary facilitation of the film's thematic issues. For Squibb, what should be a late-career showcase, equivalent if not akin to last year’s Thelma, is a bit of an embarrassment that I hope she gets the chance to bounce back from. And for Johansson it is not a great start for what I am sure she hopes is a flourishing career behind the camera.
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