Everything Is Illuminated (DVD)
APPROX. 105 MINS. - PROD. YEAR: 2005 - MPA RATING: PG-13
" ...for all its importance as a message picture and for all the subtlety of its filmmaking, the movie never quite feels like it has as much to say as it thinks it does.
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Don't let anybody tell you that reviewing is anything but subjective. I wish there were a magic set of rules, or at least guidelines, that movie or art or book critics could follow that would lead them to the same conclusions, but you and I know such rules don't exist. Reviewing is a matter of analyzing all the relevant data and then going with a gut feeling. Sometimes, a film appears to do everything wrong and the reviewer likes it anyway. Other times, everything about a film seems right, but critics go away with mixed opinions. Such is the case with 2005's "Everything Is Illuminated." The movie is thematically meaningful, sweet, moving, humorous, and lovingly crafted. Yet it left me wondering if it was really worth my time.
I'm reminded of classics like "Citizen Kane" and "2001" as exaggerated examples of films that some viewers find overwhelmingly powerful and others find underwhelmingly boring. I kept watching "Everything Is Illuminated" admiring its craft, its cinematography, its music, its acting, its messages, its sincerity, and thinking, yes, I should really be liking this. But I would have no desire to view it again, nor would I probably have wanted to watch it the first time knowing what I do now.
At least three things went wrong for me: (1) the pace was too slow; (2) the payoff was too vague; (3) the message was too obvious. Of course, these criticisms are unfair. The pace of life itself is slow; that doesn't make life not worth living. The payoff is vague but it is intentionally ambiguous to make the viewer think more about it. And the message, although one we all know and appreciate, is nonetheless of enormous significance. Maybe film criticism, like life, can often be unfair, dealing as it does with intangibles like human emotion.
A first-time directorial effort from actor Liev Schreiber, he also wrote the screenplay from a first novel by author Jonathan Safran Foer. Considering the "firsts" here, the result is still a pretty good film, whether or not I happened to appreciate it. It stars Elijah Wood as a young Jewish American whose name is not coincidentally Jonathan Safran Foer. Jonathan is a compulsively neat, conservative-appearing fellow, always dressed in a dark suit and tie, always wearing large, horn-rimmed glasses, and always collecting things. I wasn't sure about the glasses at first, their seeming a mere affectation, but like almost everything else in the story they have their symbolic significance. The odd, old-fashioned glasses serve as a metaphor for Jonathan's ever-observing, ever-searching mind. The story is about his search. Moreover, because Jonathan is a collector, we come to see the meaning behind his collecting obsession as the film moves to its conclusion.
The story begins with Jonathan deciding to go to Ukraine to search for the woman who, over half a century before, saved his Jewish grandfather from the Nazis during World War II. As we might expect, it is the journey as much as the destination that is important to the film, and the first two-thirds of the story involves Jonathan in a series of comical episodes along the way.
Jonathan's Ukrainian guide, Alex Perchov (Eugene Hutz), narrates things in a voice-over while writing it all down. Alex is an amusing chap who loves American movies and hip-hop music. He also speaks in a fractured English that captures some of the movie's truths while also conveying some of its early droll tone: "Many girls want to be carnal with me, because I am such a premium dancer." Hutz's character brings to the picture a note of warmth and understanding, too, especially in the last quarter hour.
Along with Alex and Jonathan comes Alex's grandfather (Boris Leskin), a grumpy fellow who claims to be blind but isn't and who hates Jews but takes them on tours to find their ancestors because he likes their money; and a deranged seeing-eye dog named Sammy Davis, Jr. Jr. Together, this odd company make up a pleasant road trip whose destination we can easily anticipate. There is one scene in particular I liked, during dinner in a hotel, a scene that involves a potato that reminded me of a similar episode in the Jack Nicholson film "Five Easy Pieces." The potato business is indicative of the low-key humor and thought in "Everything Is Illuminated."
Anyway, most of the film is taken up by the group's search for the woman who saved Jonathan's grandfather in a little town called Trachimrod that nobody in Ukraine has ever heard of. The town is on no maps, and nobody they meet along the way seems to know about it. Until they come to an old lady living in a small house in the middle of acres of sunflowers. It is here that the film makes a sudden turn into the very serious, and Jonathan and Alex and the grandfather discover more than they expected to find.
