How do you pay tribute to the ones you love after you have lost them? There really isn’t a cut and dry answer for this and grief can manifest differently for individuals. But in the new Sony Picture Classics movie Eleanor the Great, grief is about embracing culture, finding friends and preserving history along the way.
After having to move back to New York City in her nineties to live with family Eleanor (June Squibb) is lost, emotionally abandoned by her family and missing her life long friend. She finds herself at the local Jewish Community Center to meet new friends, she accidently finds herself in a group for survivors of the Holocaust. While she herself did not live through the horrors of that time, the friend she just lost had, and shared her experiences with her before her passing. Instead of leaving, she tells her best friends story, and forms connections with the other members as well as a young journalism student Nina (Erin Kellyman), who is trying to connect with her own Jewish heritage after the loss of her mother.
An unlikely friendship forms between Eleanor and Nina, as both seek human connections as well a connection to their culture as well. It’s a sweet story, even with this misdirection and deception. While what Eleanor does may seem like stolen valor to some of the people around her, it’s is more her way of expressing grief and paying tribute to her life long friend. It also is a reminder that a lot of the stories from survivors of the Holocaust may not be actually documented since they didn’t want to relive the horrors of that period of their life. It’s a tribute to the past, the love she felt for her best friend and her own way of expressing her love for the religion and culture that embraced her when she married into it all those years before.
The movie does have a couple parts that you easily could see where Eleanor would have had an out, a way to stop the confusion before it even started. But if they did that – there would be no movie, no story to tell and no reason to breath life into her friends past. While it handles a lot of harder topics like death, loss and of course the Holocaust, Eleanor the Great is endearing and the friendship that forms between Eleanor and Nina feels genuine and gives both women the family connection they both dearly miss.
Eleanor the Great is playing in theaters everywhere this weekend.
Overall Rating
About Eleanor The Great
Eleanor the Great features a bravura performance from June Squibb in the title role of the spirited 94-year-old who tells a tale that takes on a dangerous life of its own. Eleanor Morgenstein has always stayed engaged and connected to the people around her. So, after a devastating loss, she relocates from Florida to New York City to live with her daughter and grandson, hoping to reconnect with her family. Instead, she feels even more adrift and invisible. One day she unknowingly wanders into a support group where she doesn’t quite belong, only to reveal a story that unwittingly brings her a level of attention she did not intend. Eleanor finds herself caught up in the enlivening consequences as a young journalism student pursues her as a friend and mentor. When things go too far, Eleanor must confront the truth. In her directorial debut, Scarlett Johansson brings together themes of aging, family, loss and what constitutes deceit, as this story of friendship and history turns into a profound tale of complicated humanity.
Starring June Squibb, Erin Kellyman, Jessica Hecht, Rita Zohar and Chiwetel Ejiofor.
Directed by Scarlett Johansson.