{"id":2051347,"date":"2025-09-26T09:35:30","date_gmt":"2025-09-26T09:35:30","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/?p=2051347"},"modified":"2025-09-26T09:35:30","modified_gmt":"2025-09-26T09:35:30","slug":"eleanor-the-great-hands-the-reins-to-scarlett-johansson","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/eleanor-the-great-hands-the-reins-to-scarlett-johansson\/","title":{"rendered":"‘Eleanor the Great’ hands the reins to Scarlett Johansson"},"content":{"rendered":"

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Six years after starring in \u201cJojo Rabbit<\/a>,\u201d Scarlett Johansson has made another feel-good movie involving the Holocaust. But this time around, she\u2019s behind the camera.<\/p>\n

The actress\u2019s debut as a scripted feature film director, \u201cEleanor the Great,\u201d follows 94-year-old Eleanor Morgenstein (June Squibb<\/a>), who one day accidentally stumbles into a Holocaust survivors group at a Manhattan Jewish community center. Rather than explain her mistake, or clarify that she was actually raised in Iowa, Eleanor decides to go along with the assumption and recounts how she survived the genocide. Only it isn\u2019t her own life story, of course, but that of her longtime best friend and roommate, Bessie (Rita Zohar), who recently died, prompting Eleanor to move in with her daughter in New York.<\/p>\n

\u201cEleanor,\u201d which opens in theaters nationwide on Friday, exudes kindness and empathy toward its protagonist as she grieves Bessie and tries to find community in a new city \u2014 albeit in a twisted way. As did \u201cJojo,\u201d the new film, which is based on a debut screenplay by Tory Kamen, walks a fine line of acknowledging the horrors of the Holocaust while using the harrowing event for its own narrative purposes. But unlike Taika Waititi\u2019s satirical comedy, which warns against systemic brainwashing by boldly centering on a German child whose imaginary friend is Adolf Hitler, \u201cEleanor\u201d uses Bessie\u2019s trauma as a vehicle for a much smaller, more restrained story of loss and loneliness. Somehow, this turns out to be just as risky a storytelling choice.<\/p>\n

Eleanor\u2019s lie threatens to unravel when 19-year-old journalism student Nina (Erin Kellyman, who played Enfys Nest in \u201cSolo: A Star Wars Story\u201d), asks Eleanor after observing the survivors group if she can profile her for a college class. Nina is comforted by Eleanor\u2019s intimate understanding of death, as the younger woman lost her mother just months before this encounter. They strike up an unlikely friendship, to the extent that Eleanor even meets Nina\u2019s father, Roger (Chiwetel Ejiofor), whose job as a truth-seeking local news anchor introduces another obvious obstacle.<\/p>\n

Squibb is excellent as Eleanor, fresh off a star turn in last year\u2019s delightful action flick \u201cThelma<\/a>.\u201d The film allows her a complexity rarely afforded to elderly characters. She radiates warmth in scenes with Kellyman, serving as a wise and witty grandmotherly figure, and exhibits sharp comedic timing when playing opposite Jessica Hecht, who charms as Eleanor\u2019s middle-aged daughter, Lisa. These two nag each other endlessly: Eleanor worries Lisa won\u2019t move on after getting divorced, while Lisa hopes her mother will move into an assisted-living facility. Their conversations could feel heavier in another film, weighed down by implications of mortality, but they are delivered in \u201cEleanor\u201d as playful banter, underscoring familiarity between the two women.<\/p>\n

Johansson capitalizes on her cast\u2019s innate chemistry. An accomplished performer herself, she is unsurprisingly an actor\u2019s director.<\/p>\n

She guides the story with tenderness \u2014 perhaps to a fault, because even the most capable directing of a talented cast can\u2019t save this movie from its central premise. Johansson\u2019s accomplishments in shaping performance are eventually undermined by a melodramatic climax and predictably gentle resolution, which \u2014 paired with the film\u2019s unremarkable visual style \u2014 reduces \u201cEleanor\u201d to feeling smaller and flatter than desired. By the time Ejiofor\u2019s Roger delivers a misty-eyed monologue, the audience already knows what he will say.<\/p>\n

Johansson seems to have honorable intentions and makes a compelling case that Eleanor has borrowed Bessie\u2019s story mainly as a means of keeping her friend\u2019s memory alive. But asking other characters and the audience to so quickly absolve Eleanor of guilt minimizes the gravity of what Bessie experienced.<\/p>\n

This isn\u2019t just a little white lie; it\u2019s a major red flag. \u201cEleanor\u201d would have done well to sit with that a bit longer before its makers moved on.<\/p>\n

PG-13.<\/b> At area theaters. Thematic elements, some language and suggestive references. 98 minutes.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

\u2018 The preceding article may include information circulated by third parties \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n

\u2018 Some details of this article were extracted from the following source www.yahoo.com \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Six years after starring in \u201cJojo Rabbit,\u201d Scarlett Johansson has made another feel-good movie involving the Holocaust. But this time around, she\u2019s behind the camera. The actress\u2019s debut as a scripted feature film director, \u201cEleanor the Great,\u201d follows 94-year-old Eleanor Morgenstein (June Squibb), who one day accidentally stumbles into a Holocaust survivors group at a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2029532,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[25173],"tags":[380094,343734,380938,339789,305526],"class_list":["post-2051347","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-artists","tag-bessie","tag-eleanor","tag-feature-film-director","tag-june-squibb","tag-scarlett-johansson"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/09\/In-Black-Rabbit-Jason-Bateman-and-Jude-Law-are-brothers.png","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2051347","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2051347"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2051347\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2029532"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2051347"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2051347"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2051347"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}