Everything is Illuminated

Liev Schreiber, USA, 2005, 106 minutes

Based on Jonathan Safran Foer's bestselling novel of the same name, Everything is Illuminated follows the author's fictional persona (played by Elijah Wood) on a road trip across the Ukraine in search of Augustine, the woman who saved his grandfather from the Nazis. What might have been a dour, humourless tale is immensely enlivened by the narration of Ukrainian tour guide Alex (played by the hilarious Eugene Hutz, who is also the front man for gypsy punk band Gogol Bordello). Alex has an affection for the trappings of American hip hop, which expresses itself in a range of vintage Adidas track suits, Kangol caps and impressive break-dancing skills which he shows off at weekends in the nightclubs of Odessa; as he puts it in his amusingly idiosyncratic English "many girls want to be carnal with me, because I am such a premium dancer". When Jonathan arrives in Odessa in search of his grandfather's ancestral shetl, he is greeted by the track-suit clad Alex, Alex's slightly deranged grandfather Igor and their tempermental dog, "officious seeing eye bitch" Sammy Davis Jr. Jr. Armed with a photograph of his grandfather and Augustine, as well as a curious amber pendant, Jonathan and his guides scour the Ukranian countryside for a place that was once known as Trochenbrod.

Everything is Illuminated is much more than a film about reclaiming family history fragmented by war. It moves from the sly, light-hearted present, to a past that is recalled through the tales of survivors and momentos from the dead. The film begins with a view of Jonathan's collection of family photos and objects at his home in the US, but offers no special explanation for his zeal in memorializing his family. It is only when they reach the village once known as Trochenbrod that he discovers a much greater archive and its darker origin. Everything is Illuminated is much more nuanced film than one might expect, balancing genuine emotion with touches of the absurd reminscient of Emir Kusturica's Black Cat/White Cat and the stories of Mikahil Bulgakov.

Review by Sarah Artt
Written for EUFS Programme Autumn 2006