Everything is Illuminated

When looking at cinema as a whole, it’s somewhat fair to say that there are two different kinds of movies we all go to: those that involve fantastic, abnormal events, and those that involve humanistic stories of life. Though I can’t deny the powerful messages that can be delivered in the former, I tend to believe that we, as an audience, tend to respond more to those stories we can directly relate to. As emotional beings, we have the ability to connect to a character, especially when their actions, their stories, correlate so directly to our own. That is what director Liev Schreiber brings us with his successful directorial debut Everything is Illuminated.

Based on the novel written by Jonathan Safran, the story follows a young man named Jonathan Safran Foer, the grandson to the author of the book. Foer (played by Elijah Wood) is a collector of anything and everything. His greatest fear stems from the idea of forgetting who he is, and who his family was. Of all the members of his family, his great collection of items hosts nothing to the memory of his grandfather. It is through this desire that Foer travels to Ukraine, and paired with his guides Alex (Eugene Hutz) and his grandfather (Boris Leskin) they go in search of a lost city that holds a dark World War 2 history.

World War 2 tore up millions of families, and we’ve seen movie after movie about this very idea. We, as an audience, are always looking for something unique to pull our interest, to make us interested in something we feel saturated by. This film certainly achieves that. Though the lead role is played by the familiar Elijah Wood, the main focus of this film is the relationship of the grandfather to his grandson, Alex. It’s a story about self discover, and family history. It’s a story about how we survive incredible things only to realize their significance later in life. How do we escape from a history that is so embedded into our very selves? And most importantly, what happens to us when we come to grips with the past, and resolve our undesired history?

That’s what this film is about. It’s not about war, and how Nazis all across Europe destroyed Jewish families; that’s the familiar aspect to all of these sorts of films. This film is about two families, and the strength of the grandson’s and their desire to understand a world they were never a part of.

The writing is amazing. Rarely will I say that I am in a film, and never come across a line that feels forced, out of place, or silly. But this film, both writer/director Schreiber and author Safran developed a powerful story, and a powerful script to express it. Coupled by the perfect actors for the roles, this creates a wonderful story of humanistic suffering and resolve. Within the first 20 minutes, we understand the interests of Wood’s character, and by the end of the first act, we understand the pain the grandfather is suffering, and the interest Alex has in relating to that pain.

All this, coupled with good old honest film making, proves to be a perfect picture. Filmed in Ukraine, the country side depicts the seemingly calm nature of its inhabitants after such a rough history of both World War 2 Nazis, and the destructive nature of independence from the USSR. It’s a perfect tale of guilty history, and the relief one feels when overcoming the darkest of life’s moments.

This film came out several years ago, so I’m sure you can find it in any rental store. It’s a great story, with great characters, with great resolve. The music is perfect, the theme is wonderful, and you leave feeling as if you weren’t’ cheated out of $4 bucks by Hollywood crack-writers. 8 of 10.