REVIEW. ELEANOR THE GREAT: Big Little Lies.

June Squibb as the title character in "Eleanor the Great."

"I didn't lie. I just told someone else's story."

-Eleanor Morgenstein (June Squbb), Eleanor the Great

Can There Be Humor in the Holocaust?

Back in 1997, Roberto Benigni's Life is Beautiful, drew raves and criticism for its depiction of a Jewish-Italian waiter who, faced with imprisonment in a concentration camp with his young son during World War II, creates an imaginary world to shield his son from the atrocities of internment. Benigni, a beloved Italian comic whose Chaplinesque style evoked both laughter and pathos, created a game-like atmosphere so that his son would be distracted from the horrors that surrounded them.

Life is Beautiful is a touching, thoughtful reflection on the unconditional affection between a father and son in the midst of the unthinkable atrocities of the Holocaust. It is about making the ultimate sacrifice in the name of family and parental love. Still, people like director Steven Spielberg, whose own Holocaust film, Schindler's List, won the Best Picture Oscar a few years earlier, scoffed at Beligni's film, saying it minimized the devastation of the Holocaust by showing a concentration camp as a kind of magical playground.

I was reminded that, when watching movies, which are two-dimensional, it is the audience that adds the third dimension, so those who were offended by Benigni's approach to a very delicate subject may not represent the only way his message was received... or intended. For me, the metaphorical layers Benigni (who co-wrote and directed the film) created to explore the extremes one father went to to spare his child from a lifetime of gruesome memories, if not death itself, has stayed with me as a kind of tribute to the power of love and survival, not as a mockery of the Holocaust.

Since then, we've seen Quentin Tarantino turn the Holocaust on its ear in 2009's Inglourious Basterds ("That's a bingo!"). Twenty years after Life is Beautiful, a child's experience again became the focus in writer-director Taiki Watiti's JoJo Rabbit. Based on New Zealand novelist Christine Leunens' Caging Skies and starring actor Scarlett Johansson, Jojo raised new concerns about the idea of finding humor amidst the Third Reich, this time with a ten-year-old German boy, Johannes "Jojo" Betzler (Roman Griffin Davis), who is a member of one of Hitler's youth organizations, Deutches Jungnvolk. Nicknamed "JoJo Rabbit" because he couldn't kill a rabbit as a kind of inititation into the group, Johannes conjures up an imaginery friend - a clownish version of Adolf Hitler - for courage and companionship.

As in Life is Beautiful, there is more to Jojo Rabbit than making fun of Hitler, but the premise on which the movie rests became a kind of political touchstone for how the Holocaust should be portrayed. Last year's A Real Pain added yet another perspective, as two cousins (Jesse Eisenberg and Kierin Culkin) visit their grandmother's home in Poland, as well as the concentration camp where she was held. Again, a kind of dark humor enveloped the story, which allowed a grittier, arguably, more human approach to those who lived through - and survived - the Holocaust.

So here we are in present-day MAGA-land, and we meet Eleanor Morgenstein (June Squibb), a nongenarian retiree living the good life in Florida with her best friend Bessie (Rita Zohar). When Bessie dies, Eleanor moves to New York City to be closer to her daughter Lisa (Jessica Hecht) and grandson Max (Will Price), neither of whom have much time to spend with her. Lonely and bored, Eleanor heads to a local Jewish Community Center (JCC) and, instead of attending the Broadway musical class her daughter has enrolled her in, wanders into a group of Holocaust survivors. The group has invited a college journalism student Nina (British actress Erin Kellyman, in her film debut), to interview them for a research project.

Not wanting to admit she stumbled into the group by accident, Eleanor begins talking about her experience as a Holocaust survivor, except, she isn't one. Her late friend Bessie was and, through Bessie's stories, Eleanor becomes an integral and affecting part of the Holocaust's survivor group, finding a kind of purpose as she grieves the loss of her best friend, and bonding closely with Nina, who has recently lost her mother.

But Eleanor is lying, and not about a small or insignificant thing. The ethical dilemma on which the movie hangs is significant, and it is here that first-time director Johansson falters a bit, in how she handles this issue. I won't give away too much as the story unfolds, but suffice to say, the fish gets bigger, and the consequences of Eleanor's indiscretion grow exponentially, creating unintended twists and turns to the story, as more and more characters are impacted by Eleanor's prevarications.

There are, of course, Biblical references to Jacob and Esau, the notion of deception, etc. Eleanor, who has a history of distorting the truth and telling little fibs, doesn't recognize the potential damange she is inflicting, both to herself and those around her. In this way, some viewers may find Eleanor an unlikeable character, though her behavior is as much the product of her own experience as it is a representation of a generation slowly passing into history.

Eleanor's blunt, at-first-blush rude remarks, reminded me of every "Bubbie" I've ever met, and one in particular: my dear friend Harriet, whom I met fifteen years ago at a St. Paul, MN JCC. A new member, I was working out on an elliptical machine, when Harriet (then, nearing her 80th birthday), walked up to me and asked if I knew that I needed to wipe down the machines after use. I proudly showed her the towelettes I had already used and would use again when I finished. She smiled... sort of, and walked away.

Over the next three years, Harriet and I became friends. We talked about movies, music, books, and history. She never failed to tell me exactly what she thought about any of these topics, and I remember vividly how she insisted she would never see a movie like Django Unchained no matter how good it was. She's on my distribution list for this blog. Harriet, though initially kind of abrasive in approaching me, was mostly just direct. She'd had to navigate a good deal of her life alone, had suffered loss, and found purpose within her community. To this day, we exchange emails, holiday gifts and greetings and, Harriet - if you're reading this blog post - we love you very much.

That was my biggest takeway from Eleanor the Great, though - for the life of me - I still can't figure out the meaning behind the title. Director Johansson has directed this film with much love and affection, even if the rationale and resolution for Eleanor's actions don't quite hold together and seem glossed over and rushed at the end. Despite those narrative flaws, the movie remains one worth seeing, if only for June Squibb's irrepressible performance. Her interactions with Kellyman's Nina are genuine and touching. In some ways, Eleanor becomes a kind of conduit for Nina as she grieves her mother, an unintended mentor whose own missteps are, in part, a reaction to Bessie's death, become a different kind of seminar on loss and grief.

I got to thinking about what lessons we learn and what impact we have on those who look to us as mentors, teachers, role models. A lifelong educator and historian, I'm not always sure what students might remember from the classes they took with me all those years ago. Maybe a clearer understanding of the Constitution? A deeper sense of the diversity that defines the core of this country? A sense of rock and roll history told from the perspective of singer-songwriter Don McLean in "American Pie"? I dunno. I suppose - hope? - somewhere in all this, I've made a contribution. And so has Johansson here, though arguably with less gravitas than Schindler and more curiosity about how grief can be a kind of salve for the soul. Eleanor the Great suffers from a plot too conventional to reveal too many surprises beyond the usual platitudes we might expect from a story of deception and its consequences. It's a honest effort, overall, and I'm eager to see what director Johansson does next.

In Woody Allen's 1989 film (Dare I say, masterpiece?), Crimes and Misdemeanors, narcissistic television producer Lester (Alan Alda), who is making a documentary about himself, muses, "Comedy is tragedy... plus time." He goes on to say that you couldn't make a joke about something like, say, Lincoln's assassination, immediately after the event, but years later, it was possible to make light of the incident. Hmm.

Eleanor the Great doesn't really joke about the Holocaust itself, but Eleanor's lies may seem, to some, a kind of unwitting trivialization of the horrors and traumas of its victims. That interpretation, though, might be a stretch. Life is Beautiful, Inglourious Basterds, Jojo Rabbit and A Real Pain all used a kind of dark humor to shed more light on the Holocaust and the victims left in its wake than Eleanor's remembrances of her friend Bessie. Though I doubt Eleanor will yield much in terms of industry awards (I am predicting that Squibb will get a Golden Globe nom as Best Actress in a Comedy), I commend Johansson & Company for bringing this story of friendship and loss to the screen, and for the audacity to show that actors over sixty still have vibrance and relevance in telling their stories.

Am I getting old, or what?

*******

Eleanor the Great is currently in limited release in theaters. It should play well ono the small screen via various streaming formats later this fall.