{"id":164998,"date":"2025-09-24T00:34:08","date_gmt":"2025-09-24T00:34:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/164998\/"},"modified":"2025-09-24T00:34:08","modified_gmt":"2025-09-24T00:34:08","slug":"scarlett-johanssons-eleanor-the-great-doesnt-quite-match-the-self-proclaimed-heights-of-its-title-hero","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/164998\/","title":{"rendered":"Scarlett Johansson\u2019s Eleanor the Great doesn\u2019t quite match the self-proclaimed heights of its title hero"},"content":{"rendered":"

Open this photo in gallery:<\/a><\/p>\n

June Squibb’s Eleanor befriends Nina, a young student played by Erin Kellyman, in new drama Eleanor the Great.Sony Pictures Classics<\/p>\n

Eleanor the Great<\/p>\n

Directed by Scarlett Johansson<\/p>\n

Written by Tory Kamen <\/p>\n

Starring June Squibb, Erin Kellyman and Chiwetel Ejiofor<\/p>\n

Classification PG; 98 minutes<\/p>\n

Opens in select theatres Sept. 26 <\/p>\n

One day, hopefully in the not too distant future, the New York <\/a>Museum of Modern Art should curate a series of films under the title \u201cPickle Pictures: The Semitic Films of Greater Manhattan.\u201d <\/p>\n

There are already a handful of candidates for inclusion, ranging from Joan Micklin Silver\u2019s romcom Crossing Delancey (which featured Peter Riegert as a pickle salesman) to Rob Reiner\u2019s When Harry Met Sally (a speared dill practically plays a supporting role in the film\u2019s most iconic scene) to, of course, Brandon Trost\u2019s deeply underrated comedy An American Pickle (in which Seth Rogen played an Eastern European Jewish immigrant from the 1920s whose body is accidentally preserved in a giant vat of pickling juice). <\/p>\n

The unifying theme is, of course, not the particular joys of preserved cucumbers but the vastness and complexities of the American Jewish experience, as viewed through the eyes of those struggling to live and love in the greatest city in the world.<\/p>\n

Film Review: Seth Rogen\u2019s An American Pickle is a sweet and sour ode to Judaism that even your bubbe will love<\/a><\/p>\n

And now, with the arrival of Scarlett Johansson\u2019s feature directorial debut<\/a>, Eleanor the Great, the as-yet-unsanctified canon of Pickle Pictures has a new contender. Even if, as the film stretches on, it\u2019s clear that the actor is only working with a half- and not full-sour jar. <\/p>\n

Opening in a South Florida grocery store with perhaps the greatest pickle gag of all time, Eleanor the Great follows the nonagenarian character of its title (played by June Squibb) as she navigates her quotidian life with the stubborn spirit of a thousand bubbes. But after Eleanor\u2019s best friend and roommate Bessie (Rita Zohar) passes away, Eleanor is forced to move back to Manhattan, where she\u2019s taken in by her somewhat estranged daughter (Jessica Hecht). <\/p>\n

In a bid to make new friends, Eleanor shuffles off to the local Jewish community centre, where she mistakenly attends a Holocaust survivors\u2019 group, and then \u2013 through ostensibly comical but rather grim circumstances \u2013 ends up misappropriating Bessie\u2019s history as a Second World War survivor as her own life story. <\/p>\n

Open this photo in gallery:<\/a><\/p>\n

After Eleanor’s best friend and roommate passes away, the nonagenarian has to move back to Manhattan, where she\u2019s taken in by her daughter.Jojo Whilden\/Sony Pictures Classics<\/p>\n

Eleanor\u2019s trail of lies \u2013 at first little and white, but then growing immensely dark \u2013 eventually ropes in everyone in her orbit, including her daughter, her rabbi, a young student named Nina (Erin Kellyman) who is wrestling with both her faith and her family after the death of her mother, and Nina\u2019s father Roger (Chiwetel Ejiofor), a local newscaster who smells a good story. <\/p>\n

At once admirable and wobbly, Johansson\u2019s first turn behind the camera \u2013 she neglects to give herself a supporting role, a temptation that is usually high for many actors-turned-directors \u2013 is consistently intriguing, if not always for the right reasons. Johansson possesses a sharp eye when it comes to a sense of place, whether it be Eleanor\u2019s Florida stomping grounds or the Manhattan enclave of Yorkville, an Upper East Side neighbourhood that was once home to much of the city\u2019s Jewish community. (There is one scene shot inside a local synagogue that feels both grand and haunting, its congregation reduced to wisps of worshippers.) <\/p>\n

The director also has a firm grasp on character, allowing the always wonderful Squibb \u2013 still staring down performers half her age, or younger \u2013 to work her usual magic as the unflappable but also deeply wounded Eleanor. Zohar and the perpetually underrecognized and underutilized Hecht (who worked with Johansson on the 2010 Broadway production of A View from the Bridge) also deliver, matching wits with Squibb at every turn. (Zohar gets an especially tender spotlight toward the film\u2019s very end.) <\/p>\n

Film Review: Screen legend June Squibb gets long-overdue Mission: Impossible moment in delightful comedy Thelma<\/a><\/p>\n

Yet the director doesn\u2019t have as firm a grasp on the story\u2019s more chin-scratching developments, especially as Tory Kamen\u2019s screenplay keeps leapfrogging from one overly convenient twist to the next. To subvert a Holocaust survivor\u2019s experience \u2013 to open the door to questioning a survivor\u2019s story \u2013 is a massive narrative gambit that requires the utmost of emotional nuance, sensitivity and depth. And for the most part, that is an approach just out of the filmmaker\u2019s grasp. <\/p>\n

The result is a drama that tries to be a comedy, and a comedy that doesn\u2019t know that it is in fact a drama, with the resulting story uneasily resting somewhere along the border separating the profound from the perfunctory. <\/p>\n

There are moments, many of them, throughout the film that promise a great future for Johansson as a director. But as it lands, Eleanor the Great hands its audience something of a problem. A pickle, you might say. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Open this photo in gallery: June Squibb’s Eleanor befriends Nina, a young student played by Erin Kellyman, in…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":164999,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[49,48,75,337,2922],"class_list":["post-164998","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-movies","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-entertainment","tag-movies","tag-noastack"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/164998","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=164998"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/164998\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/164999"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=164998"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=164998"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=164998"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}