Word: gage
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Adapting the volume for the big screen, Gage has sacrificed much of the undercover reportage that made Eleni such a good read. He relies instead on a top-heavy selection of sentimental flashbacks featuring Eleni selflessly ministering to the needs of her children, sanctifying her as the archtypical Grecian mother-martyr. In so doing, Gage forgoes the realistic context essential to the docu-drama style he is ostensibly seeking (and had achieved in the book), ending up instead with a tear-soaked, superficial Monday Night at the Movies...
...title role, Kate Nelligan unfortunately does nothing to diminish Gage's beatific image of Eleni. Shot through a bright yellow screen, Nelligan positively glows with the radiance of the blessed. In one scene, she has to lug a huge trunk full of rare American goodies up the hill next to her house, drawing a clear analogy between the soon-to-be betrayed Eleni and the martyred Christ making his ascent up Calgary Hill. As she reaches the top, she announces to Nicholas, God and anyone else within hearing, "Nicolai Gatzuiannus, your father is alive!" with all the verbal presence...
...picture Nelligan as Gage's angelic mother, imagine Sally Field as the widowed farm wife in Places in the Heart. But unlike Field, whose film character admittedly has a much less turbulent life story than does Eleni, Nelligan is unable to bring her character to life with remotely human inflections or gestures...
...fair, even if the material that Nelligan is given to work with is a bit unbelievable, her performance as a desperate mother who willingly sacrifices her own life in order that the lives of her children can be saved is unforgettable. Gage's bigger-than-life size version of his mother lingers indelibly...
...Nelligan manages to redeem herself with bombast, Malkovich as her less-than-saintly son is an utter bombastic disappointment. Where Malkovitch was superb in earlier off-beat roles as the photographer in The Killing Fields and the blind boarder in Places in the Heart, his portrayal of Gage is shamefully one-sided and wholly unappealing. Brooding both in his personal and professional lives, he would seem an unlikely candidate for the type of altruistic soul-searching chronicled in the book and the film. Even his rigorous investigative reporting, which includes pulling a gun on his mother's executioner, would seem...