Eleni (1985)

One of my favorites movies. I love the end because let us a great learning about what is important in what we do in our lives. Many times what we will like to do is not the correct action. We can't do what we don't believe and in what our parents teach us. This movie remember my mother when Kate shout "my children's" at the moment she was killed. My mother fight for us so we can be proud of her forever. The acting of Kate and Nicolas are wonderful. Was a good decision in selecting both for this movie and the idea to filmed this real story. Movies like this should be consider by the producers for the new presentations.

This film seems to have unjustly attracted a lot of nonsensical comments, mostly from left of center commentators; and it's sadly revealing how the facts cited by other viewers are not even addressed, but simply ignored by the left-ist commentators. Those who accuse the film of being anti-communist propaganda mostly use ad hominem arguments, and insult and invective. But ask yourself: what good is a political view which assumes itself (because it is self-described as "revolutionary") to be above ordinary moral or political criticism? If that were true, then there could never be any way to judge the value of the actions performed in its name. In short, this is a reasonably good film, with a fine performance by Kate Nelligan, and much less good work by other members of the cast. The direction is not inspired, and the flashback structure of the film seeks to maximize the emotional effects without stopping to consider just how powerful those effects are all by themselves, that is, the use of that structure betrays the fear of the film-makers that the story might not have the impact they wanted it to have. The original book is stronger, but it too is flawed by Nicholas Gage's failure to ask himself about how it was that the communists picked on his mother, even though he presents some of the evidence that answers the question. It's clear from the book that some members of his family -- I think his grandfather, but it's been a long time since I read the book -- had serious disputes with other people in the village in the 20s and 30s and perhaps even earlier, and that there may even have been a murder involved; naturally, Gage is not all that clear on the point. The communists, men, most of them, couldn't go after the grandfather, so, brave souls that they were, went after the most vulnerable: the Gage womenfolk. Despicable, but that is often the tenor of village and peasant life. And to me, this was the message of the book, that the politics of revolution were, in many cases, simply another weapon in the never-ending village war between its own members. The problem with the film is that it never really clarifies this central aspect of the drama, and so the power of Nelligan's performance is marooned. It affects, but it's almost in a vacuum, and Malkovich's portrayal of Gage, which I thought quite good, is similarly detached; but the flaw lay in the original book, which ducks important questions because Gage, North American that he is, simply doesn't understand the deeper currents of village life. Worth a look, no matter its flaws. No work of art is ever perfect, and this one gets high marks for trying.

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.