Eleanor the Great – Film Review
by Frank L.

Director – Scarlett Johansson
Writer – Tory Kamen
Stars – June Squibb, Erin Kellyman, Chiwetel Ejiofor

The well-known quotation “Oh, what a tangled web we weave, when first we practise to deceive” springs to mind while watching this unlikely comedy-drama. June Squibb, who is in her nineties, plays Eleanor Morgenstein, a determined ninety-four-year-old lady who has been living for the last eleven years in a sheltered community in Florida, with another widow, Bessie (Rita Zohar). Bessie was Polish and a survivor of the camps. She regularly woke up with nightmares and remembered in detail those horrifying times. Bessie’s nightmares had become part of Eleanor’s life. Following Bessie’s death, Eleanor’s daughter Lisa (Jessica Hecht) arranges for Eleanor to move to New York to live with her initially.  At a Jewish community centre, Eleanor happens by chance upon a meeting of holocaust survivors, which is also attended by a young trainee journalist, Nina (Erin Kellyman). Everyone assumes naturally that Eleanor is a holocaust survivor, and the group put pressure on her to tell her story. After initially declining, Eleanor tells Bessie’s story as her own. Nina is impressed by the tale, and the tangled web begins to be woven.

It transpires that Nina is grieving the death of her mother 8 months earlier, and her successful TV news anchor father, Roger Davis (Chiwetel Ejifar), for his own personal reasons, has been incapable of giving his daughter the support she needs. These father and daughter stories of handling grief intertwine with Eleanor’s grief for Bessie, but in addition, Eleanor’s story, which is in fact Bessie’s holocaust story, now takes on a life of its own.

A connection to the Holocaust is an unlikely place to find the comic, but Johansson and screenwriter Tony Kamen manage to do just that. Squibb’s Eleanor is a feisty, determined woman. Squibb’s timing is first-rate, and her throw-away lines are accurately delivered. It would be an awesome performance by any actor, but considering Squibb’s vintage, she’s ageing like fine wine. While Eleanor’s determination is dominant, her more tender side is seen in her friendship with Nina, and their interaction captures the challenges of age and youth. Nina’s relationship with Roger is remote. He is a silently grieving, successful, busy professional man who is incapable of seeing the grief his daughter is suffering. His remoteness and inability to mention his dead wife intensify Nina’s palpable grief. Kellyman makes a fine young woman, trying to handle the burden of grief. Ejifar is far less convincing as a grieving widower, even if his remoteness makes Nina’s loneliness and despair more explicable.

While this film entertains at a certain level, given the numerous challenges that continue to exist in relation to the Holocaust by those who deny it even happened, it is by definition in dangerous territory.  Notwithstanding the outstanding performance by June Squibb, the film leaves you with an uneasy feeling that faking a Holocaust story is problematic to say the least.