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Catherine Ellsberg is a culture writer and English teacher based in Paris.

Most people know <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/obituaries/2023/06/16/daniel-ellsberg-pentagon-papers-dead/" target=_blank>Daniel Ellsberg</a> as the whistleblower who came to fame after releasing the Pentagon Papers, a top-secret study of the Vietnam War, to the New York Times, The Post and a dozen other newspapers. Or they knew him as the advocate who dedicated a lifetime to the pursuit of peace and justice, a fervent anti-nuclear activist and defender of the press.

But me? I knew him as my grandfather, the movie fanatic.

Daniel Ellsberg, who leaked the Pentagon Papers, dies at 92

Growing up, I always considered myself somewhat plain — my mind too dull, too unvarnished next to the sparkling intellect of my grandfather. There were so many ways I couldn’t keep up. I didn’t know how to talk about <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2023/04/25/ellsberg-discord-pentagon-papers-cancer/" target=_blank>the crisis in Ukraine</a>. I didn’t have photographic recall (the number of casualties in Vietnam, the names of all of history’s infamous quislings or spineless presidents). Nor could I stomach some of my grandfather’s pessimism, his belief that we were all capable, as human beings, of great evil and cruelty.

One was through piano playing. Granddad had grown up in the shadow of his stern mother, by all accounts an imposing woman who had great (if inflexible) plans for her son. He was to become a concert pianist — the next Rubinstein. He practiced for hours a day, often leaving school early to fulfill his filial duty. This all came to a violent end at age 15, when his father, driving with the family in the car, fell asleep at the wheel and crashed, instantly killing my grandfather’s mother and his little sister, Gloria.

My grandfather fell into a coma. When he woke, he came to a startling conclusion: He would not become a pianist.

For the next 75 years, he barely touched the piano. But when he did, he could sit at his Steinway and play the most beautiful pieces I had ever heard: Chopin, Rachmaninoff, Shostakovich. After I learned to play the same Chopin nocturnes, he would compliment me — “You’re much better than I ever was” — his way of saying, Don’t ever doubt that you are my granddaughter and that you belong to me.

The other way we connected — far more profoundly — was through a shared passion for cinema. Because if I have one talent of which I can be unwaveringly proud, it is this: I know movies.

Granddad would start every conversation, every email, the same way: “Seen any good movies lately?” He didn’t know the names of my friends and didn’t show any particular interest in my love life. But he cared — deeply — about what I was watching. More important, he wanted to know what I thought about the movies, whether a cartoon for kids, the sappiest rom-com, a silly action franchise or the goriest horror flick.

The last film we saw together: “<a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt14209916/" target=_blank>Cocaine Bear</a>.” (We left halfway through.)

In college, I was the film critic at the school newspaper. Every week, I’d send Granddad my humble reviews. They weren’t great, yet he always took them seriously. This, I learned, was the highest compliment I could receive. He didn’t hesitate to tell me if he thought I was wrong (usually this was punctuated by an anecdote of walking out of such-and-such movie 15 minutes in). But I also learned to decipher moments of affection: “I’ll have to try it again,” he’d tell me, if I truly insisted on a film’s “potential.”

We had sentimentality in common; both of us cried often, and easily, in the theater. We were moved by filmed moments between family members, scenes of nature, declarations of love. We wept tenderly for characters down on their luck, burdened by remorse or guilt.

Last year, I persuaded my grandfather to watch my favorite movie of all time with me: “<a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0107282/" target=_blank>The Joy Luck Club</a>,” director Wayne Wang’s version of Amy Tan’s classic novel about Chinese mothers and daughters. It’s a heavy film, all about dysfunction, sorrow and generational trauma. But it’s also about forgiveness, the healing power of storytelling, whether tales passed from mothers to daughters or the stories we tell ourselves.

My favorite scene occurs toward the end. Jing-Mei (June) Woo, one of the daughters in the film — who as a young girl was pressured by her mother to become a piano prodigy  — sobs. She has just taken part in a horrible family dinner, during which her harsh immigrant mother seems to have mocked her in front of a family friend. They finally have it out.

“I’m just sorry that you got stuck with such a loser,” <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0107282/characters/nm0001840" target=_blank>June says</a>, “that I’ve always been so disappointing.” Her mother claims that she never expected anything: “What you mean disappoint? Piano?” No, June says, it was everything: “No matter what you hope for, I’ll never be more than what I am. And you never see that, what I really am.”

By this point in the film, it had turned dark. The sun had set over the bay outside Granddad’s window, and the room felt charged — at least, it did to me.

As the credits rolled, Granddad and I sat for a moment. I can’t remember what we said to each other, but I saw that he was crying quietly, too. And in that moment, I hoped he knew the truth: that I saw him. Not the whistleblower, not the great American hero. I saw my beautiful and brilliant grandfather, whom I loved.

A dying Daniel Ellsberg talks about Discord and the power of leaks

If I ever doubted whether he saw me back, I got my answer after I left his house this past March. All of us had flown out after his diagnosis of inoperable pancreatic cancer. I had stayed as long as I could, but had to fly home to Paris to resume work.

After my plane landed, my siblings wrote to say that right after I’d left, while they were all eating dinner, Granddad started telling old stories. Except, he didn’t tell them the usual way. Instead, every story looped back to some movie he’d seen. He’d say something like, “Oh, this guy looked like that actor … you know, that famous actor who was in that classic 1940s movie?”

Apparently, they couldn’t figure out to whom he was referring.

“If only Catherine were here,” he said. “She would know the movie I’m talking about. Yes, she would know.”

Catherine Ellsberg

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Remembering my grandfather Daniel Ellsberg — film fanatic

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