- Based on the critically-acclaimed novel by Jonathan Safran Foer, “Everything is Illuminated” tells the story of a young man’s quest to find the woman who saved his grandfather in a small Ukrainian town that was wiped off the map by the Nazi invasion. What starts out as a journey to piece together one family’s story under absurd circumstances turns into a meaningful journey with a powerful series o
Based on the critically-acclaimed novel by Jonathan Safran Foer, “Everything is Illuminated” tells the story of a young man’s quest to find the woman who saved his grandfather in a small Ukrainian town that was wiped off the map by the Nazi invasion. What starts out as a journey to piece together one family’s story under absurd circumstances turns into a meaningful journey with a powerful series of revelations — the importance of remembrance, the perilous nature of secrets, the legacy of the Holocaust, and the meaning of friendship.
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Based on the novel by Jonathan Safran Foer, Everything is Illuminated stars Elijah Wood (Lord of the Rings) as Jonathan Safran Foer, a young Jewish man who wants to learn how his grandfather escaped from the Nazi incursions into Russia. From the U.S., he hires the hip-hop loving Alex (Eugene Hutz, leader of the gypsy-punk band Gogol Bordello) and his surly grandfather (Boris Leskin, Men in Black) as tour guides–only to discover, when he arrives in Odessa, that they are perhaps less than dependable. Thus begins a curious, almost metaphysical road trip that carries Foer into the past of his grandfather’s village and the present of his own compulsive habits. Adapted and directed by Liev Schreiber (best known as an actor in The Daytrippers and The Manchurian Candidate), Everything is Illuminated buckles a little under its literary weight–what seems deft and resonant in the middle of several hundred pages can feel forced and ove! rstated in a two-hour movie–but it’s also full of delightful dialogue, vivid characters, and oddball yet affecting scenes. Wood is his usual charming and neurotic self, but Hutz steals the show with the help of his wonderfully fractured English and his soulful eyes. –Bret Fetzer
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June 22, 2008
#1
What version of “Everything is Illuminated” was R. C Gorham looking at? (The best movie in 2005 you didn’t see, May 22, 2006). I must say, the countryside in this movie looked nothing like Amsterdam and when Jonathan gets off the train at Lvov (or Lviv as the Ukrainians like), it doesn’t seem like the Netherlands to me or most viewers. No stars to the reviewer and 5 for the movie! I believe this movie has a limited audience, but for those who get it, it is absolutely a must to own and watch over and over.
June 22, 2008
#2
judge from the title of this movie, you could already predict that this movie would be a pretentious one. from my point of view, what we got here is another never-engind jews holocaust nightmare revisited and replayed, but this time, they might have realized that changed the happenstance venue from germany or poland was necessary, since they’ve been told again and again thousands times, so the remote controlled jewish production force behind the hollywood movie industry decided to move it to ukrain, another nazi atrocity done to the old mother russia. it’s fine with me, but this movie was scripted with a very weird enough and overly pretentious screenplay.
why you have to make the nerd wear a magnifying glasses? in order to make him give you a feel that things would become larger, more illuminated, more transparent or, what? this screenplay was so unnaturally put together. but the guy(s) who wrote the screenplay might also know that if without putting some clown+jerk-like characters in it to ridicule itself as a semi comedy, or what should i say…a crossover between drama/tragedy/autobiography/documentary/comedy, this boring movie won’t have any box office potential. so weird ukrainian characters were casted into this bored-to-death deadbeat to keep it going.
another amazing object in this movie was that old russian car. it could keep driving and driving without refilling the gas tank. and when it ran out of gas, the old guy could suddenly come up with just a small full can of gas and then that small car never needed to stop at gas station anymore (i didn’t see any gas station in the ukrainian countryside).
well, other than that amazing small car, i didn’t get any impression of this boring movie.
June 22, 2008
#3
I read a lot of reviews about this film here, and I see I am in the minority here, but this film bored me to tears….It had a couple humerous moments but wasn’t funny. It had a couple touching moments but wasn’t touching. I thought it just sat there and nothing really happened. Couple that with the total unlikelihood of Jonathon hiring the one tour guide in the Ukraine that had an affair with the one person in the Ukraine who knew what had happened…No…I don’t buy it, and I don’t buy into the total “we hate all tourists and Jews attitude”… It was 105 minutes of borrrrring. Even the dog was unbelievable. No one in this film would be found in reality. I like eccentric chracters, but when every character is eccentric, the movie is just pointless. I think the final nail in this film’s coffin for me was when the old lady asked: “Is the war over?” Did anybody really take that line seriously?
June 23, 2008
#4
Regrettably, I saw the movie before I read the book. DO NOT make the same mistake. While the movie in and of itself is enjoyable, it doesn’t even come close to capturing the sheer glory of the novel. So don’t go out of your way to see this film, but you absolutely must read the book.
June 23, 2008
#5
From ‘Flipper’, to ‘All I Want’, from ‘The Lord of the Rings’, to ‘Everything is Illuminated’ I love almost anthing with Elijah Wood.! Not only is he a great young actor, he’s a hot young man, just as cute as the dickens!!!
John AJ B.