"Everything Is Illuminated" (2005)

When Your Past is Not So Premium

"Everything Is Illuminated" (2005) Review

"Everything is Illuminated" (2005) is a difficult pill to swallow yet a thoroughly enjoyable watch at the same time. The film, Levi Schreiber's directorial debut combines humor, drama, and the classic road movie into a story which starts and stops feeling both endless as it matches forward towards illumination, yet also like a whips of a film as not all that much really happens until the last half hour.

For me, being Jewish, I was particularly enthrall end with the story as it was essentially the story of my great great grandparents at the end of the 19th century. The plot was the atypical road movie for the first hour or so of the flick then swiftly changing direction and focusing on the somber story of the destruction of a Ukrainian village by Nazis. It's cast of characters include Jonathan a vegetarian Jew with a fondness for collecting (Elijah Wood), Alex. a crotchety old grandfather with a mysterious past (Boris Leskin), a "deranged" dog or rather in the Ukrainian translation, bitch, and the comic relief, a Ukrainian translator also named Alex with a fondness for hip hop (Eugene Hutz) with weird translations including the unforgettable, "my English is not so premium." Together they are searching for the village of Trachimbrod for whence Jonathan's ancestral family came.

The film has a strong emphasis on developing compelling shots varying between vibrant colors and more confined colors, as well as setting up large and small shots that though looking interesting seemed to take away from the story a bit as well as felt pulled directly form a Wes Anderson movie but with slightly less comedic effect. All the cinematography in the film both aided and crutches the film ultimately, in my opinion, derailing the plot and the audience’s attention. This is not aided by Wood's performance which was most likely intended to be merely precociousness, yet which translated, as many of Alex's translations, into something else entirely becoming ultimately alienating.

Also, this film reminds the viewer of why Ukraine is not known for their music. Need anything else be said?

The film was overall well composed and phenomenally written until the end where some of the dialogue should have been a bit less philosophical (let the viewer pick that up and stop treating people like idiots!) yet, this film lacked the sense of thickness that accompanies a story and rather seemed to be waiting to reach the end rather than really exist in the moment making it feel, sadly a bit incomplete. For instance, develop the characters during those scenes a bit more and not before hand (I would have rather picked up details about Alex's life through conversation as opposed to the hilarious introduction at the beginning.)

Yet these are not where the film strives to succeed. The story is the most important aspect of the film and rather than parade that around more and focus less on establishing phenomenal shots (the cinematography was superb even for being unnecessary ) and more on the plot and the characters. By spending more time building them as people rather than characters, the story would have been clearer and the film would have been just a little more. But hey, that's not to say this is not a fantastic film, it's just a film with a few problems. Yet, in the end, these quibbles are small and petty and despite them, this is a film that should be watched and in some small place in everyone's heart loved a bit.

Stars: 8.5/10