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- There were only two of them left: Scarlett Johansson made a film about the Holocaust.
There were only two of them left: Scarlett Johansson made a film about the Holocaust.
Scarlett Johansson's first full-length film is dedicated to Jewish culture, Jewish tragedies, and Woody Allen personally, whom viewers will remember watching more than once. Johansson herself is not in the frame, but the main role was played by 95-year-old June Squibb, an Oscar and Golden Globe nominee for Nebraska. Critics took the picture coolly, but now "Eleanor" has been released online and it already has an almost 100% viewership rating. Izvestia watched the film and explains why it causes such different reactions.
Older heroines are making a movie
Two elderly women, Bessie and Eleanor, live quietly in Florida, helping each other by spending time chatting, sitting on benches, exercising in the morning and shopping for kosher products at the local supermarket. Bessie is from Polish Jews, she survived the Holocaust, and horror was forever frozen in her eyes. Eleanor was born in New York, she has a daughter and a grandson there, and her life turned out quite well. Scarlett Johansson's film is mainly about the relationship between these two women, played by June Squibb and Rita Zohar, who is 15 years younger than Squibb in real life, but looks even older on screen.
An image from the movie "Eleanor the Great"
But this is not a story about saying goodbye, as one might think from the first scenes. And this is not a comedy about how two elderly girlfriends "nightmare the young", using the inviolability of their age. Although the very first vivid dialogue seems to hint at exactly this: "Do you ever smile? — Hitler took my smile. "And mine, too!" "You're from the Bronx, Eleanor!" — So what, now I can't suffer because of the Holocaust? Bessie, tell Ivan that I can! "Yes, she may suffer because of the Holocaust."
An image from the movie "Eleanor the Great"
This, by the way, is one of the best dialogues in the film and is clearly inspired by the humor of Woody Allen, with whom Scarlett Johansson played in "Match Point", "Sensation" and "Vicky Cristina Barcelona". Moreover, the most successful moments in the film also refer specifically to him, including a direct quote — a shot with a bench and a bridge, borrowed from Manhattan. This is so that no one has any doubts that Johansson remembers and respects the genius of comedy.
The caustic humor, the vocabulary of the American Jewish family, the palette in warm colors, even the length of the picture in a rare hour and a half today — Scarlett Johansson studied diligently, reviewing his best paintings from the earliest to the latest, where sometimes his sense of beauty changed and mistakes arose, due to which not all of what was shot in two hours. Even devoted fans can immediately recall the decades. There are mistakes here too, and in the second half of the film there are too many of them.
What kind of picture did you get
The problem with the film is that its strong points quickly give way to a flood of weak ones. Here, we have two elderly heroines, very bright, there is an amazing connection between them, which Eleanor explains very simply: "Sometimes I can't figure out where I end and she begins." And this is shown to us literally from time to time: one heroine begins to speak, and another continues, who is not alive, but her spirit remains in Eleanor.
It's interesting, but the problem is that Eleanor is very voluminous, she has a family, weaknesses, new friends. And about Bessie, we learn rather sketchy details, including her tragic experience of the Holocaust. There is definitely nothing new in it for anyone over the age of 18, and we are not informed of any new details like those in last year's Brutalist.
An image from the movie "Eleanor the Great"
Johansson's main plot is that after the death of her friend, Eleanor returns to New York (filmed also like Woody Allen's) and gets into a group therapy session for Holocaust victims, where she unexpectedly pretends to be Bessie and tells someone else's story in the first person. A young journalist, the daughter of a famous TV presenter, is present at this session, and as a result of the friendship that has arisen, Eleanor's lies gain national fame. But there is no excitement in this roguish line, they make it clear to us what is important here, as a motherless girl and a 90-year-old adventurer involuntarily find a way to help each other. Their relationship is written out very tenderly, but this "Revizor" clearly should have had more comic and satirical and less sentimental orchestra behind the scenes.
Clearly, this is a personal story. Johansson, an Ashkenazi heiress from the Russian Empire, rightly asks herself, along with her New York heroines, whether she has the right to talk about the Holocaust. And he answers: not only do I have the right, but I also have to. I also have to know my culture, religion, and traditions.
But the viewer of 2025 has every right to ask: how is it that modernity does not break into the narrative of today in any way? Not a word about October 7, about global victimblaming, unprecedented since the days of Nazism. How is it that the young heroine never mentions Palestine and Gaza, if not everyone will decide to go through her university, and it is quite clear to the viewer. Here we are told about the mockery of Jewish children by the Nazis, why no one present at Eleanor's monologues will remember the videos that the militants replicated on the Internet, because this comparison immediately suggests itself.
An image from the movie "Eleanor the Great"
And we're all waiting for Johansson to say B after A. This, by the way, is generally typical for cases when actors with status sit in the director's chair: they usually want to speak out on sensitive topics directly and without producer control, using their stardom to attract attention. That's what Angelina Jolie, Robert De Niro, and Sean Penn did, and that's okay. Many rough edges are forgiven for the sincerity and passion of their work. But Scarlett Johansson seems to step on her own foot and ends the film with a few touching but rather banal monologues. As a result, this is a nice film for the evening, despite the theme of the Holocaust, but it is not a statement, not a provocation, not a response to the challenges of the time.
It's just a good-quality lyrical comedy in the spirit of Woody Allen, where the actress in the director's chair gave other actresses, and of different generations, the opportunity to express themselves perfectly in the frame. This cannot be called a failure, especially now, when there are not so many viewers of cinema. But Johansson said so much at the start of the film that she still can't get rid of the feeling of slight disappointment by the end.
Переведено сервисом «Яндекс Переводчик»
