Eleni

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.

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.

I have seen this movie and it is very gripping and entertaining, unfortunately it does not tell the whole story of Greece and what the resistance actually was and who they were fighting. In particular this story is one that as usual suffers from lies of omission and the simplification of very complex political issues into good vs. evil. Perhaps Eleni was faced with an evil leader of the left, however do we know who and why the left was actually fighting. Quickly, Greece had a King and Aristocracy that was controlled by a military dictator before WWII, Greece was pivotal to British interests in Egypt (Suez Canal and Middle East Oil -Iran) and basically Great Britain backed this military dictator. When WWII broke out the king and dictator fled and it was the Greek people who fought the Germans and Italians, England actually fought with them at the end also. Problem, average Greek person did not want King or fascist dictator back (this is the communist group - which they were really leftist not Stalin communist). Greeks wanted to govern themselves and this is not what Great Britain - they wanted King and dictator back and guess who won . The King came back until the late 50's and 60's were Greek people won their independence. On mean idiot that was communist does not mean that all of the things the left was fighting for were wrong - this is pure and simple propaganda.

Great movie, with a good performance from Kate Nelligan. Cant believe all the people defending communist kidnappers and murderers, after all the years of Nazi murders, people actually defend thugs kidnapping children, murdering villagers who refused to agree with them, etc, etc, etc.... The Greek Civil War was nothing more than Stalin trying to add Greece to his list of appetizers along with Poland, Hungary, Romania, Bulgaria, etc... Stealing children to take behind the iron curtain, executing parents who try to keep their own children, stealing houses, livestock and food crops to feed the murderers of their own people is not a good thing and this movie sends that message in spades. People are supposed to be happy about being out from under the fascist murderers and put under the domination of communist ones???????

This is another of those supposedly based-on-a-true story accounts, this one dealing with a man's (writer Nicholas Gage) quest to return to his native Greece and avenge his mother's death which occurred 30 years earlier.

This is not an uplifting story but it's not depressing, either.....but it is grim. It begins with the Grecian mother protecting her kids from the vicious Communisits of the late 1940s. The film switches back and forth from that period to modern-day but it's never disjointed. The acting by John Malkovich, Kate Nelligan and Linda Hunt is excellent and the scenery is pleasing and very little, if any, profanity if memory serves me. It's a decent film but not anything I'd watch more than once.