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.
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.