Eleanor the Great plus Short Takes on some various other cinematic topics
The Debilitating Power of Grief
Reviews and Comments by Ken Burke
I invite you to join me on a regular basis to see how my responses to current cinematic offerings compare to the critical establishment, which I’ll refer to as either the CCAL (Collective Critics at Large) if they’re supportive or the OCCU (Often Cranky Critics Universe) when they go negative. However, due to COVID concerns I’m mostly addressing streaming options with limited visits to theaters, where I don’t think I’ve missed much anyway, though better options may be coming soon. (Note: Anything in bold blue [or near purple] is a link to something in the above title or the review.)
My reviews’ premise: “You can’t please everyone, so you got to please yourself.”
(from "Garden Party" by Rick Nelson and the Stone Canyon Band, 1972 album of the song’s name)
However, if you’d like to know more about rationale of my ratings visit this explanatory site.
Here’s the trailer:
(Use the full screen button in the image’s lower right to enlarge its size;
activate the same button or use “esc” keyboard key to return to normal.)
If you can abide plot spoilers read on, but this blog’s intended for those who’ve seen the film or want to save some $ (as well as recognizing those readers like me who just aren’t that tech-savvy). To help any of you who want to learn more details yet avoid these all-important plot-reveals I’ll identify any give-away sentences/sentence-clusters with colors plus arrows:
⇒The first and last words will be noted with arrows and red.⇐ OK, now continue on if you prefer.
WHAT HAPPENS: 94-year-old Eleanor Morgenstein (June Squibb) lives in Florida with her friend of many years, Bessie Stern (Rita Zohar)—a Holocaust survivor, who in later flashback scenes tells Eleanor of her captivity and brutal death of her brother by the Nazis—but when Bessie dies Eleanor decides to move back to NYC (she lived previously in the Bronx, now will be in Manhattan) to be with her daughter, Lisa (Jessica Hecht), and grandson Maxie (Will Price), although busy Lisa’s on a frustrated mission to get tart-tongued, bossy Mom into a senior facility. Given that her new roommates aren’t home much during the day, Eleanor soon gets bored so Lisa signs her up for an activity at the nearby Jewish Community Center. However, when she gets there she mistakenly wanders into a Holocaust Survivors group; yet when she realizes it, instead of courteously leaving she tells them of “her” past using what she knows of Bessie’s life. The group is moved by her story, especially Nina Davis (Erin Kellyman), an NYU undergrad journalism student who’s been allowed to observe the group for an assignment she’s writing (she truly prefers poetry but is trying to appease her increasingly-distant father, Roger Davis [Chiwetel Ejiofor], a noted TV journalist who doesn’t give her much time/emotion in sharing their feelings about the recent death of their wife/mother.) Eleanor and Nina bond over assumed connections of death in the family, with Roger impressed by Nina’s story so he meets with Eleanor also. All of this comes crashing down, though, when Eleanor signs up for a very-long-delayed bat mitzvah ceremony, attended by the Survivors group, as Lisa and Max show up astonished; Lisa tells everyone her mother’s not born Jewish (converted when she married Lisa’s father years ago), comes originally from the Midwest. Nina especially is heartbroken by this news, although Roger still wants to feature it in an upcoming broadcast story. ⇒Nina goes to the TV station in hopes of stopping him but instead sees he’s using Eleanor’s situation as the lead-in to a week-long exploration of how grief can cause us to lose our way, even as he admits his own attempt at grief-avoidance over losing his wife, pushing his daughter away in the process. At the end, Eleanor apologizes to the Survivors group, saying she was so lonely without Bessie she grasped at a chance to find human connections again, ill-considered move at the time she now understands.⇐
SO WHAT? There’s more authenticity in this film than you might at first realize in that actual Holocaust survivors were cast to be in Eleanor’s support group while Johansson has Jewish heritage herself as she explains in talking briefly about her grandmother in this short video (8:09, also some commentary from Squibb and Kellyman) which she drew on in trying to achieve truth about the depictions of Jewish people in this story scripted by Tory Kamen. Further, Squibb truly resembles her character because she was born in the Midwest, converted to Judaism when she married her first husband, Edward Sostek, in 1953! Although I’m not Jewish, have no direct connections to anyone harmed by the Holocaust, and have never claimed anything in my past that wasn’t true, I still found myself easily relating to it. (OK, maybe I exaggerated a bit a few years ago when I said I got a Pulitzer Prize for Criticism, but it was an honest mistake as I often mix up myself and Roger Ebert, who did win a Pulitzer, the first film critic to do so [this link also contains a long excerpt from his prize-winning essay about the dearth of significant film roles for women in the mid-1970s; on a related topic, June Squibb is already being talked about as a Best Actress nominee for the 2026 Oscars, so we’ll see how that plays out over the next few months. One more aside here: I did meet Ebert once when I was teaching at SMU in Dallas. He came as part of a parade of famous critics presenting Ingmar Bergman films in preparation for Bergman coming to the campus to accept a major award from the school. I got to interview Ebert for an SMU-produced cable TV film criticism show I was a part of; certainly he knew cinema to an astounding degree—he also ran a 2-day extended seminar on a frame-by-frame analysis of Bergman’s stunning Persona {1966}, which I participated in as a marvelous experience—but I found this chubby guy to be large because he was so full of himself. From what I’ve seen about his later life as he knew he was dying, he became much more humble and open to the concerns of others {see my nearly-never-ending review of Life Itself, Steve James, 2014—a biography of his career—using my usual poor layout back then}].)
Looking over again what I blabbed endlessly about just above, I never said I ever avoided a lengthy, unnecessary aside in these reviews, though, so maybe Eleanor and I could have a dialogue that wouldn’t be included in a collection of great (or even verifiable) conversations. Nevertheless, this film, for me, should be included in any catalogue of significant work, especially by a first-time director working with immense talent in the leading as well as all of the supporting roles, with Zohar’s scene of Bessie talking of her brother’s murder as so poignant I could barely watch it—Oscar nom for her too? Maybe. (Many critics weren’t as moved, however, as I’ll explore in this review’s next segment, possibly revealing me as too soft-hearted [or soft-headed, I’m sure some would say],yet I remain impressed by what I saw—but if you go looking for it through a search make sure you don't end up with a biography of former-First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt, of which there are near-countless options.)
BOTTOM LINE FINAL COMMENTS: Eleanor the Great opened on September 26, 2050 in 892 (its largest presence) domestic (U.S.-Canada) theaters, where it’s currently taken in a mere $2.5 million ($2.6 million worldwide). You can still find it in 45 of those venues, but it’s much more available in streaming where you can rent it for $19.99 on Amazon Prime Video and Apple TV (they’ve dropped the “+”), although the CCAL as a whole is giving you limited reasons to do so as the Rotten Tomatoes positive reviews are only 66% while the Metacritic average score drops down into OCCU territory at 51%, despite my much-more-embracing response. As an indication of so many critics who had limited good things to say about this narrative here's Alissa Wilkinson of The New York Times who mixes some encouragement with numerous hesitations: “The thesis of ‘Eleanor the Great’ is that bereaved people withdraw from the world, and that by confronting our grief openly we can overcome our loneliness […] But it takes its time getting to that conclusion, along the way dabbling in all kinds of other themes, like the meaning of friendship, whether lies are always bad, what Judaism means to its adherents and how relationships between parents and children change over time. […] There’s enough in ‘Eleanor the Great’ to still make it watchable, especially the genuinely moving intergenerational connection between two women who need each other to move past their particular grief. If only the world around them had been developed more carefully, too. I found it to be considerably better than many of my colleagues, even as I might share their concerns.
In contrast, if you prefer to wallow in a full dismissal of this film you can turn to Odie Henderson of The Boston Globe who found little to even consider liking: “ ‘Eleanor the Great’ is one of the worst and most distasteful movies I’ve seen in a long while. My old boss, Roger Ebert [Here he is again!], once advised me to save the zero star rating for reviews of films I found morally reprehensible. He also advised it for films that had no redeeming value whatsoever. […] Indeed, it deserves zero stars because it’s so poorly executed that it renders its subject matter even more offensive than it might have been under better circumstances. […] I don’t think a legendary director like Ernst Lubitsch could have saved this screenplay; one minute it’s a mistaken-identity comedy, the next minute it’s a harrowing drama featuring a monologue about how Bessie’s family suffered and her brother was killed by the Nazis. […] I commend Zohar’s performance of the monologue in this [late] scene, but the rest of it shows the enormity of a story Eleanor did not have the right to tell, let alone commandeer. It’s not Zohar’s fault that the film doesn’t have the chutzpah to deal honestly with Eleanor’s lies.” I truly believe you’d find a lot more of substance in Eleanor … than its fiercest detractors would lead you to think, but if hesitant you might want to seriously consider that $20 investment. Even if you don’t decide to watch you might be satisfied with my Musical Metaphor wrap-up tactic, which this time offers 2 songs to aid my look into aspects of our film’s title character.
We’ll start with "Eleanor" from The Turtles (1968 album The Turtles Present the Battle of the Bands) which addresses this elderly woman’s sense of celebrity when she first presents “her” Holocaust story: “Eleanor, gee, I think you’re swell / And you really do me well / You’re my pride and joy, et cetera / Eleanor, can I take the time / To ask you to speak your mind/ / Tell me that you love me better,” although such public and private joy soon turns bitter as the truth comes out (ironically, this happy song was intended as a parody of what Paul McCartney would later call his "Silly Love Songs," including The Turtles’ own 1967 hit, "Happy Together"), so I’ll turn to McCartney again for The Beatles’ "Eleanor Rigby" (1966 Revolver album, video from their Yellow Submarine [George Dunning, 1968] movie) where our film’s Eleanor has her own version of “Waits at the window / wearing the face that she keeps in a jar by the door / Who is it for? / All the lonely people / Where do they all come from?” Certainly, Eleanor the Great has an active share of lonely people, most of whom finally find some solace as the film works through inherent traumas. Sad as it is, I say see it!
SHORT TAKES
Related Links Which You Might Find Interesting:
We encourage you to visit the Summary of Two Guys Reviews for our past posts* (scroll to the bottom of this Summary page to see additional info about your wacky critic, Ken Burke, along with contact info and a great retrospective song list). Overall notations for this blog—including Internet formatting craziness beyond our control—may be found at our Two Guys in the Dark homepage. If you’d like to Like us on Facebook (yes?) please visit our Facebook page. We appreciate your support whenever and however you can offer it unto us! Please also note that to Post a Comment below about our reviews you need to have either a Google account (which you can easily get at https://accounts.google.com/NewAccount if you need to sign up) or other sign-in identification from the pull-down menu below before you preview or post. You can also leave comments at our Facebook page, although you may have to somehow register with us there in order to comment (FB procedures: frequently perplexing mysteries for us aged farts).
*Please ignore previous warnings about a “dead link” to our Summary page because the problem’s been manually fixed so that all postings since July 11, 2013 now have the proper functioning link.
If you’d rather contact Ken directly rather than leaving a comment here at the blog please
use my email address of kenburke409@gmail.com—type it directly if the link doesn’t work.
OUR POSTINGS PROBABLY LOOK BEST ON THE MOST CURRENT VERSIONS OF MAC OS AND THE SAFARI WEB BROWSER (although Google Chrome usually is decent also); OTHERWISE, BE FOREWARNED THE LAYOUT MAY SEEM MESSY AT TIMES.
Finally, for the data-oriented among you, Google stats say over the past month the total unique hits at this site were 45,903 (As always, we thank all of you for your ongoing support with hopes you’ll continue to be regular readers.) Below is a snapshot of where those responses have come from within the previous week (appreciation for the unspecified “Others” also visiting Two Guys’ site):
0 Response to "Eleanor the Great plus Short Takes on some various other cinematic topics"
Posting Komentar