Eleni

Stunning performances by Kate Nelligan and most of the cast in this powerful story, based on truth, help make this a must-see film.

I wonder if some of the reviewers, such as onceuponatime500, really saw the movie, or if they just wrote from some vicious and preconceived bias.

The communists come to the village to conscript -- kidnap -- children to become guerrilla fighters. The mother, Eleni, takes a drastic step, mutilating her oldest child to spare her from being shanghaied into the communist forces.

Being communists, they will not be thwarted, not by any such reactionary notions as self-ownership, or freedom, or parental rights, or any of that silly stuff: They take the next oldest girl instead.

Eleni loves her children and believes, foolishly according to onceuponatime500, but in line with what Charlie Anderson (James Stewart) in "Shenandoah" said: They're my children, not the state's, not some murderous movement's.

For years after seeing this powerful and haunting story, I could recall Nelligan's last scene and be moved to tears.

The agony Eleni went through was duplicated millions of times in the bloody 20th Century, as some government or another, or some tyrannical movement or another, kidnapped young people to force them to risk their lives for some cause most of them didn't understand, much less support.

Think Viet Cong, think Hitler's armies, think Stalin's and Mao's imperialist and aggressive armies, and, yes, think of the poor draftees from the United States.

Think, contrastingly, of parents, parents who spent years loving and caring for their children, hoping those children would be able to live to a better adulthood than their parents. Think of those parents seeing their children sometimes literally torn from their grasp, thrown into lines to be cannon fodder for cruel warlords -- communists, Nazis, imperialists of one kind or another, even when disguised as crusaders.

"Eleni" works at almost every level except for the incredibly horrible performance by John Malkovich.

If it hadn't been seen as anti-communist, even Hollywood would have honored "Eleni." But its being anti-communist made "Eleni" an outcast in that artistically and morally corrupted town. However, "Eleni" is powerful drama.

Added 25 November 2017: Watching "Eleni" on YouTube, I am wondering if my dislike of John Malkovich's performance is at least as much for how unpleasant he makes Nick Gage. As portrayed by Malkovich, Gage is rude, cold, aloof; he has no personality, doesn't respond to people, not even to his wife who asks questions. As performed by Malkovich, Gage's personality is enough to chase away a viewer.

We are now exactly 100 years after the Bolshevik revolution in Russia, an event that led to hundreds of millions of deaths, and destruction of entire nations, of entire peoples.

There is an irony in Nick Gage's working for The New York Times, which has been frequently pro-communist, and nearly always anti-anti- communist, with its Moscow correspondent Walter Duranty infamously painting a rosy picture of the Soviet Union during the time of the murderous monster Josef Stalin.

This century anniversary makes "Eleni" even more poignant and even more important.

As another reviewer wrote, this is a movie about a family, not about politics - even though it is terror that causes that family to be harmed.

As the mother, Kate Nelligan is absolutely superb, shining, wonderful. As the son as an adult, John Malkovich is curiously detached.

Again, although the movie was first rate, I question the decision to alternate time periods with a parallel narratives throughout. I think it lessens the impact. I see no reason the story couldn't be told chronologically, to greater effect.

Those two reviewers from Argentina and Greece who wrote that the movie was propaganda are being silly. Neither this movie nor anyone denies that the Communists (and those democrats defending the former king and government who had returned to power after the war - the king wishing to reign but not rule) fought the Nazis during the Second World War.

This movie does not take place during that war - and doesn't refer to it.

Further, when the Second World War ended, there WERE no native Greek fascists fighting in the Civil War - when a reviewer writes that this was a fascist war, it's crazy. In the movie, you hear the Communists using the term, "fascist" in the same loose propagandistic way that, say, Prime Minister Tony Blair is referred to as a fascist - falsely.

As the Soviet Union's proxies looked to be gaining in the Civil War, Britain asked the United States to participate in an effort to aid the Greek government with financial aid and weapons. over this and the Communist insurgency in turkey, was the Truman doctrine of containment of Communist totalitarianism born. These are simply facts.

Moreover, the fact that the Greek Communists took tens of thousands of children from their parents and shipped them off to Communists countries such as Albania and Czechoslovakia is obviously well-documented in the book and movie. However, as I wrote above, the movie simply looks at a human story of a mother and her love for her children.

Kate Nelligan makes the movie heartfelt, moving, powerful. She should have won the Oscar for this performance.

A story about the love of family and how strong political opinions can make people monsters, helped by personal gains.

Found the back and forth in time a little confusing.

The scenery and settings were beautiful and convincing, the actual scenes were heart wrenching and I felt the agony of the characters.

I was so sad that it wasn't possible to watch this in Greece (but was able to watch abroad), because of the fanaticism of the supporters of a certain political group.

The 1945 to 1949 civil war in Greece still raises heavy debates, partly because the Communists lost and the losers seem to attract some sympathy from ordinary people.

Other people commenting on this film complain about its being mere propaganda against communism and supporting fascism. What a lot of baloney. It's about mothers and children, and about how, no matter what kind of brawl is going on, the men run to the hills, leaving the women and children behind to be brutalized. And it's about how one woman lost her life because she refused to give her children up to the state, no matter who that state was.

I weep because my family is portrayed in this film. It reminds me of the pain they went through but refused to speak about. A story that received no fanfare but brought pain to many. I see through the eyes of the director and the words of Nick Gage what they went through. A beautiful, love letter to a strong mother.