Review of Eleanor the Great, directed by Scarlett Johansson

If you’re new here, and stumbled upon this blog through the mythical powers of the Internet, welcome! I know a lot of visitors to my website are people who randomly come upon this website through search engines like Google, but I also do have a lot of visitors who come back. Regardless: my name is Ashley, and I started this blog in order to keep track of everything I’m coming across in the world.

When it comes to blogging, or even watching movies and whatnot, I’ve been in such a weird headspace lately. I started a new job after quite a bit of a spell of not having any besides freelance and contract work, and now that I am actually working, I’m not watching as much as I used.

Part of it is fueled by my newfound YouTube addiction, but part of it just is that I can’t stay awake long enough to get everything I want done. I haven’t even been going to the movies lately to see them in-person because I simply am just tired after I get everything else done.

When I do end up watching movies, I try to go for things that I’m generally really excited about. It helps to have something that I really want to watch at the end of the day because if I don’t, then I’m less likely to actually sit down and watch the movie.

I originally wanted to see Eleanor the Great when it was in theaters, but then I procrastinated too hard and it ended up leaving my local theater fairly quickly. While I was disappointed about that, I still had the chance to see it when I saw it was added to one of the streaming platforms I pay for nowadays. So when I had a free weekend I decided to sit down and watch it!

Let’s get into the review though. I know my introductions can get quite long, so wrapping it up here.

After moving back to New York City, Eleanor finds herself accidentally in a Holocaust survivor support group and living a different life.

We meet our main character in this movie, the titular Eleanor, and her best friend Bessie when they’re at a grocery store. As they quip with one of the fellow retirees in their community, Bessie collapses on the floor, ultimately passing away after a medical episode. Eleanor, at 94, is then promptly moved to New York City to live with her divorced daughter and grandson.

She’s not too happy about it as well, especially considering the remarks she makes about her daughter and how they live in a neighborhood with a small apartment. Lisa and Max are also too busy to keep her company, so Eleanor starts getting depressed and a little insane sitting around the apartment. As a solution, Lisa decides to try and drop her mother off at the Jewish Community Center to make some friends.

Eleanor wanders into a Holocaust survivor support group by accident, and instead of confessing she was roped into this accidentally, she adopts Bessie’s story, who actually was a survivor. The community accepts her because of her story, which makes Eleanor feel like she finally has a group that sees her (even though they really don’t), and the student sitting in on the session, Nina, comes up to her after class.

Nina is a student journalist and wants to write a story about Eleanor based on what she just heard, but Eleanor flees before she can commit to the bit. We learn that Nina, despite her young age, has lost her mother and is going through the grieving process, but she decides she wants to learn more about Eleanor and her story, continuing to reach out and try to get her speak to her more.

Eleanor and Nina do end up meeting more and forming a friendship of sort, which fills the void in both of their lives. Nina’s father is never around because of his on-air broadcast job. Nina starts writing about the stories Eleanor is telling her about Bessie’s life, and she actually writes a piece that is evocative and gets quite a reaction from her classmates.

When her father sees the story, he wants to put it on television. They decide to hold a bat mitzvah for Eleanor because a part of the story is that she never had one, but when Max notices something is amiss when Eleanor gets out of their shared taxi to go, he informs his mother. Lisa and Max walk in on the filmed ceremony and expose Eleanor’s lies, leaving Nina and everyone involved, including the fellow survivors, upset about the entire thing.

After this Eleanor finally agrees to go into a care home, but then Nina’s father decides to air the story on television and the truth. Nina comes up to her father and they discuss their grief and how he hasn’t been the father she’s needed, and her father decides to frame the entire story about what we do when we’re grieving, as Eleanor did what she did for her friend and to fill the void of loneliness.

The story is put on television, and Eleanor reconciles with both her own daughter and Nina. Nina and her father also heal their wounds with each other. Eleanor goes back to the support group and eventually comes clean about everything, with the film ending with a scene of Eleanor and Bessie discussing how she lived to finally meet Eleanor when everyone else didn’t survive.

Overall Thoughts

I’ll have to admit that I came into this story not really knowing what it was going to be about beyond the basic synopsis, but I liked it a lot more than I ever expected to. While Eleanor was a bit wrong to try and impersonate a Holocaust survivor, the reminiscing on grief and its themes were something I found to be powerful in the broader scheme of the movie and our lives.

There were also some scenes I really enjoyed, such as when Nina and Eleanor went to Coney Island. I think it shows how this place moved on without Eleanor but still continues, so when she confronts something she went to as a child nad in her past, it shows how she connects more with herself. It was an authentic moment—everything she had with Nina was authentic but the start of their relationship.

All of this is to say that I enjoyed this movie. I say go watch it if you’re interested and have a free Friday night! You might find it worth it if it’s a movie that seems up your alley.

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