Eleanor Morgenstein (June Squibb), the title character in Eleanor the Great, is great in her grief- the way it makes people strange and brave. Scarlett Johansson, in her directing debut, guides Squibb to a performance that aches with hidden, deferred sorrow. It is a film about the loneliness of old age, the desperate need to be seen — even if it means living in and creating a story that is not one’s own.
The lie Eleanor tells is not small. She mistakenly enters a Holocaust survivor support group and recounts a story that belongs to her best friend, Bessie, who has recently died. The film does not flinch from the moral weight of this act, nor does it fully resolve it. That ambiguity is the film’s primary source of tension. The theft, the adoption of another’s Holocaust history, is treated as a symptom of something deeply personal. Elenor is grieving. She is alone and lonely. She is trying to stay in the world by becoming someone who has suffered more than she did. The question the film asks is whether this is an erasure or a homage.
Johansson’s direction is gentle and unafraid. The film does not exploit the Holocaust for sentiment. There are no flashbacks or melodrama. Johansson allows the Holocaust survivor support group to speak honestly and plainly about their experience and trauma. She lets Eleanor’s lie unravel slowly. The film’s restraint is its tribute and most outstanding feature. It knows that the Holocaust is not a backdrop, but a wound that never heals. It suggests that those who carry this weight need more than silence. They need space to speak, even when the world has moved on.
Squibb plays Eleanor with a brittle dignity. She is not likable and is not meant to be. Her grief makes her sharp, impatient, and cruel. But underneath that cruelty is a longing for connection. Erin Kellyman’s Nina, a student who befriends Eleanor, becomes the film’s moral compass. Their relationship is the heart of the story. Through Nina Eleanor, the truth is confronted—both the reality of her lie and the truth of her loneliness.
The title “Eleanor the Great” reveals itself in the final act. Greatness, here, is not about heroism but the courage to admit her and everyone’s brokenness. Her willingness to face the consequences of her lie, and in her final gesture, honesty. The film does not grant redemption; it merely offers recognition.
As a Holocaust drama, the film is careful. It does not pretend to speak for survivors. It listens. As a portrait of senior loneliness, it is devastating. Eleanor’s withdrawal is quiet. It is seen in the way she criticizes her daughter’s hair, the way she snaps at clerks, and the way she refuses to engage unless provoked. The film understands that grief is not always loud. Sometimes it is just a refusal to participate.
Some moments falter. Some dialogue feels too clever. Some coincidences strain belief. The subplot involving Nina’s father, played by Chiwetel Ejiofor, is unnecessary. But these are missteps, not failures. The core of the film—Eleanor’s grief, her theft, her reckoning—is intact.
Eleanor the Great is a film about the cost of pretending. It asks what happens when we take someone else’s pain and wear it as our own. And it answers, with sorrow.
Grade: B+.
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