‘Eleanor the Great’: June Squibb Continues Her Leading Lady Era With Great Comic Timing and Deep Emotion

Sandra Miska

It is rare to start a new chapter at age 94, but actress June Squibb did just that last year with her first-ever lead role in “Thelma,” a heartfelt and hilarious comedy that conveyed an important message about not underestimating our senior citizens. Squibb carries this energy into her latest feature, “Eleanor the Great,” as the titular Eleanor, who also finds herself in a new era. Following the death of her best friend and longtime roommate, Bessie (Rita Zohar), she has no choice but to leave her life behind in Florida and move back to New York to live with her overly busy, career-focused daughter, Lisa (Jessica Hecht), and her equally busy young grandson, Max (Will Price). After she wanders into a support group for Holocaust survivors, Eleanor tells a harrowing and tragic story that moves everyone in the room. Problem is, it’s not her story she is telling, but Bessie’s, and before long her lie, told out of a necessity to honor and mourn her friend, spins out of control.

Eleanor could have left her moment of embodying Bessie’s memories in that room at the Jewish Community Center, but her fake story catches the attention of Nina (Erin Kellyman), a student journalist who is doing a project on Holocaust survivors. Eleanor initially resists the young woman’s overtures, but after her family ditches her for Shabbat dinner, she invites Nina over. Despite the vast difference in their ages, they bond over their grief for loved ones, as Nina has recently lost her mother. Nina’s mother was Jewish, but she never really connected with that part of her identity while her mom was alive, so Eleanor becomes a stand-in of sorts for her. The older woman is excited to learn that her new friend’s father, Roger (Chiwetel Ejiofor), is a famous newscaster whom she and Bessie loved to watch together. At this point, you can tell where this is all heading, and soon Eleanor is in way over her head.

In truth, Eleanor converted to Judaism as a young woman after she met her husband. She went on to become close friends with Bessie in New York, and the two eventually moved to Florida together after they both became widows. But they are more than just gal pals who split the bills, as they receive a great deal of emotional support from each other, even more so than they receive from their respective adult children. One night, unable to sleep, Bessie wakes Eleanor and tells her the full story of the terrors she experienced as a young Jewish girl in Nazi-occupied Poland, including things she has never told another soul. She does this not to burden her friend, but because she needs someone to bear witness before her death. Therefore, the viewer can understand that Eleanor’s heart is in the right place when she shares Bessie’s story, although, in her grief, she goes about it in an extremely misguided way. However, Squibb plays Eleanor with such feeling and honesty, that we are able to stay with her throughout this ill-conceived journey finds herself on.

“Eleanor the Great” is the directorial debut of actress Scarlett Johansson. Authenticity was important to her, which led her to hire real-life Holocaust survivors to play the members of the support group. According to her, most of them, who are around the same age as Squibb, appear in front of the camera for the first time here, which keeps with the theme of never being too old to experience and learn new things.

“We spent two days doing the scene work with them,” recounted Johansson. “They were so patient. A lot of them had not known one another, so it was interesting to see them get to know one another. They shared their stories, their advocacy work; it was really extraordinary. It was so meaningful for everybody on the crew to have them there, and it really felt like it gave a whole other layer of importance to the scenes.”

Squibb also revealed that she was impressed by the lack of nervousness she detected in the novice actors. “You didn’t feel they were trying to be there. They were there, and they talked to me immediately as I came into the set. They were a wonderful group of people. They’ve been through so much. What did they have to lose, I guess?”

Zohar is also a Holocaust survivor, as well as an experienced actress, and it is a shame that she departs as early on as she does, but she and Squibb make use of their limited screentime together. Although they have this heavy scene, there is also a lightness in their chemistry. We watch Squibb come through with her excellent comic timing right before Bessie reveals her truth to Eleanor. Bessie claims that she never did anything with her life, but Eleanor points out that she got their cranky neighbor Clarice to turn down her TV.

“I find myself laughing and crying at the same time at all sorts of stuff,” revealed Johansson, when asked about going about injecting humor into a film that tackles such heavy subject matters. “I find in very difficult moments that I have to kind of laugh.” Squibb also admitted to finding humor in the worst situations. “If you didn’t, I think you’d go nuts… But I think we had to be careful not to be too funny.”

Eleanor’s friendships, first with Bessie, and later with Nina, are the heart of this film, and they prove that the truest bonds transcend generations and backgrounds. But there is also an important subplot involving Nina’s complicated relationship with father, Roger, who does not support her in the ways she needs in the wake of her mother’s death. Emboldened by what she learns about herself through her relationship with Eleanor, Nina eventually confronts her father in an emotional scene.

In the third act, a turning point for everyone comes in a pivotal scene where reality comes crashing in on Eleanor during what is supposed to be her bat mitzvah. Although she is in a mess of her own making, you cannot help but feel for her, as the pain in her voice is evident when she pleads for Nina to hear her out. Understandably, Nina is hurt, and it especially cuts deep because it all happens in front of her father, Roger.

After all this build-up, “Eleanor the Great” ends somewhat prematurely, at a point where Eleanor’s whole ordeal starts to open up an important dialogue. And while Squibb is excellent throughout, Johansson glosses over pivotal moments and does not take the opportunity to dig as deep as she should have into the extent of Eleanor’s grief, and how her motives come from a place of love. But it does end on a hopeful note for our heroine. She is not ready to pack it up yet, and you get the sense that life’s little joys and lessons are far from over.

“Eleanor the Great” releases Sept. 26 in theaters nationwide.