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PLOT: A young American man travels to a tiny Ukrainian village hoping to find the woman who saved his grandfather from the Nazis. Initial culture clash with his guide/translator slowly turns into friendship and understanding.
Everything Is Illuminated is an uneven but charming directorial debut from actor Liev Schreiber.
The film concerns Jonathan, an uptight American (Elijah Wood) who obsessively collects objects and trivia related to his family tree.
Jonathan travels to the Ukraine hoping to find some trace of a woman who saved his grandfather during the Nazi invasion 60 years before. His tour guide and translator is a young man named Alex (Eugene Hutz) and his driver is Alex' snarky and ostensibly blind grandfather (Boris Leskin). Into this mix add a demented dog named Sammy Davis Junior, Junior and the result is culture chaos on wheels.
A large part of the film concerns how our American hero gets along with his Ukrainian hosts. Jonathan, for example, is a vegetarian -- something Alex and his grandfather simply cannot comprehend.
Initially Jonathan is wrapped, protectively, in his American identity. He travels through the countryside attempting to keep himself somehow separate. Compared to this quiet American, Alex is a veritable fountain of conversation. His mangled English and wonderful questions are the source of much of the film's humour -- he talks about everything from disco dancing and Shaquille O'Neal to anti-semitic sentiment during the war and "getting carnal" with girls. He and Jonathan engage in a hilarious semantic dance around the word Negro; it's a scene that underlines the false barriers that separate people.
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Everything Is Illuminated gets serious as Jonathan and his tour guides get closer to their goal of finding a woman from the past. There are historical bits and surreal moments and odd tragedy wedged in here, and while Everything Is Illuminated doesn't always work, it is never less than visually enchanting. This is a beautiful film to look at.
The final scenes are so hopeful in their suggestion of the brotherhood of man -- er, siblinghood of humans, that is -- that you can forgive the film's clunkier moments.
Elijah Wood puts in a subtle performance as the American whose horizons are broadened. Eugene Hutz, usually seen on stage with his gypsy punk band Gogol Bordello, is the scene-stealer in this movie. Liev Schreiber may be a first-time director, but he's obviously a dab hand at casting.
BOTTOM LINE: Not a perfect film, but very amusing and very moving and visually inventive throughout.
(This film is rated PG)