Obligatory confession: June Squibb can do no wrong.
I’m sure she’d somehow make grocery shopping a fascinating experience.
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| Now fast friends, Nina (Erin Kellyman) surprises Eleanor (June Squibb) with a nostalgic stroll to see what remains of the golden age of Brooklyn's famed Coney Island. |
But although Tory Kamen’s screenplay has plenty of lighter moments — with occasionally snarky one-liners well delivered by Squibb — the story itself is deeply poignant. Events unfold under the accomplished guidance of Scarlett Johansson, making an impressively sensitive feature directing debut.
The moral quandary here revolves around a crucial question: If a truth isn’t somebody else’s to tell, is it nonetheless a truth that should be revealed?
Eleanor (Squibb) and Bessie (Rita Zohar) share an apartment in a Florida retirement community. The story begins as they waken on an average morning, have breakfast, and then embark on another day. They have the comfortable — if mildly grumpy — camaraderie that bespeaks decades of friendship. Their lives are simple but enjoyably routine: greeting familiar faces, sparring with clerks and shopkeepers at nearby stores.
(Eleanor’s handling of a young stock boy, at their grocery store, is priceless.)
Then, suddenly, Bessie is gone.
Cast adrift and totally bereft, Eleanor — having lived in the Bronx for 40 years, back in the day — allows herself to be relocated to New York City, where she moves into an apartment with her daughter Lisa (Jessica Hecht) and grandson Max (Will Price). Lisa is overly attentive, which frustrates Eleanor, long accustomed to taking care of herself. Although Max obviously loves and admires his grandmother, he’s too occupied with his own “stuff” to pay her much attention.
Believing it necessary to keep Eleanor engaged, Lisa enrolls her into a singing class at the local Jewish community center. Eleanor pokes her head in the doorway just long enough to hear a woman warble several stanzas of Stephen Sondheim’s “I’m Still Here” (a bit on the nose, that), and bolts.
She’s “rescued” by another woman, who invites Eleanor to join her where a dozen or so similarly elderly men and women are seated in a circle. What Eleanor assumes is some sort of friendship meeting turns out to be a regular gathering of Holocaust survivors, who ease their ongoing torment by sharing their experiences with each other.
Embarrassed by being somewhere she doesn’t belong, when it comes Eleanor’s turn to talk, she hesitates ... and then relates what she must have heard hundreds of times from her departed friend Bessie, plagued by horrific memories in the middle of countless sleepless nights.
And claims these memories as her own.
Eleanor’s recitation touches everybody profoundly, particularly Nina (Erin Kellyman), a 19-year-old New York University journalism student shadowing this group — with everybody’s permission — in the hopes of generating a good story. Nina approaches Eleanor after the meeting adjourns, requesting additional time and details; not wanting to be caught in the lie, Eleanor agrees.
Nina’s interest isn’t entirely professional; she senses, in Eleanor, somebody who might help channel her own grief. Nina still struggles to process her mother’s recent death, which has driven a wedge between the relationship with her once-idolized TV news anchor father, Roger (Chiwetel Ejiofor). He has completely shut down in the wake of his wife’s sudden absence.
Needing somebody with whom she can bond, Nina pursues Eleanor as both friend and mentor. Eleanor, attuned to the fact that this young woman wears her heart on her sleeve, willingly reciprocates.
But Nina also continues to pursue Eleanor’s “history,” and — not wanting to shatter their bond — she obliges, with more of Bessie’s vivid memories. Nina shares everything with classmates, which quickly brings Eleanor a level of attention she did not intend.
Where, we worry, can this possibly go?
Squibb, at 94 the same age as her character, positively sparkles; she makes it clear that Eleanor is not to be ignored or overlooked. She captures Eleanor’s wit, mischievousness and missteps, along with her wish to be seen and counted: to mean something, to make a mark on someone’s life.
Kellyman, in turn, delivers a palpable level of emotion and grief. Although Nina’s fragile intensity is shattering at times, Kellyman also persuasively conveys the young woman’s struggle toward self-control and adulthood, along with her quietly desperate resolve to find her way back into her father’s orbit.
Ejiofor makes Roger aloof and distracted: not exactly unkind — Ejiofor’s expressive face can’t help radiating the man’s innate benevolence — but simply lost, in his own way.
Hecht’s Lisa is mild comic relief: a single parent who finds it difficult to connect with either her son or her mother. Eleanor tolerates the well-intentioned helicoptering, mostly because she finds it amusing.
The filmmakers are deeply attuned to this material. Kamen’s grandmother made a similarly dizzying cross-country move from Florida to Manhattan, at the age of 95; and in 2020 Johansson learned that her great-great uncle, Mosze Szlamberg, and his family perished in the Warsaw Ghetto.
No surprise, then, that Johansson populated this story’s support circle with actual Holocaust survivors. Their participation adds a level of authenticity that surmounts their lack of professional acting skills. (Honestly, you’d never know, without being told.)
Dustin O’Halloran’s lovely, piano-based score adds just the right touch: often a quiet backdrop, occasionally adding emotional heft.
Profound truths emerge, during the course of this story. Why do we bury grief, as if it isn’t an universal experience? More crucially, who speaks for those who cannot speak?
Marvelous little films, like this one, are what make moviegoing such a joy.
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