A Scientist at the Movies Reviews by Greg Paris

The Evaluation System Reviews by Title Reviews by Date

Reviews from Video Reviews of the Classics Personal Background

Title: Everything is Illuminated

Date Viewed: 10/16/05

Details:

Eugene Hutz

Elijah Wood

Boris Leskin

Written and directed by: Liev Schreiber

Score: +

The Review: Elijah Wood is Jonathan Safran Foer, dutiful American grandson of Eastern European Jewish descent. His is also a collector -- of memories, of trinkets, of family history -- all in small, labeled plastic bags. Obsessive is closer to the mark. Jonathan walks around with Coke-bottle bottom horn-rim glasses and a perpetual look of awe or bewilderment. When given an old and faded picture by his ailing grandmother, he becomes fixated on a quest to find the woman in the picture, Augustina, who saved his grandfather's life as the Nazis were advancing on Trachtenbrod. The quest -- a "very rigid search," in the words of the film's narrator Alex (Hutz): Odessa tour guide, fractured translator and erstwhile companion -- takes him into the byways, backcountry and breadbasket of the Ukraine. There are several curious and interpenetrating puzzles around which we hover until Everything is Illuminated.

As a travelogue, this is not a good advertisement for the current state of the Ukraine: gritty, decrepit, cynical. As a coming of age movie or a Quixotian quest, however, it works quite well -- interesting and developing anomalies, curious and quite often amusing situations, and a growing awareness of the roles played long ago on the edge of the last stetl. It is not for nothing that a series of end-credits go to various Holocaust Museums.

Well-made independent production with English subtitles, a lot of Ukrainian and Russian dialog, and some occasional verbal inconsistencies between the sound and the text. The ersatz English of the narrator is often malaprop and amusing. Small cast, but good; and the dog is great! Short cameo by the book's author (Jonathan Safran Foer).

(16-Oct-05)

Back to the chronological list of reviews