Everything Is Illuminated (2005)

Originally Reviewed

Saturday September 16, 2006

As I've stated on numerous occassions I'm not a big fan of independent films [as of late that seems to be slowly changing...] but the rave reviews and interesting plot of Everything Is Illuminated made me a little curious to check it out. Elijah Wood plays Jonathan, an American of Jewish descent who is a rather odd character. At first Jonathan appears to have the strange fetish, similar to some sort of psycho serial-killer who likes to collect odd objects from their victims and display them all over their wall. While Jonathan indeed collects rather strange family items, his purpose for doing so is to remember things about their lives. He has all kinds of objects for past and present family members, except for his grandfather.

All Jonathan has of his grandfather is a broach and an old picture of him standing next to a woman. This mysterious woman had saved his grandfather during the Holocaust and as it appeared in the picture, was also the owner of the broach. Wanting to know more about this woman and her relationship to his grandfather Jonathan decides to travel to the Ukraine in hopes of unlocking some secrets from the past.

Arriving in the Ukraine Jonathan hires a couple of quirky "tour guides" who specialize in helping to discover the history of people's dead Jewish relatives. The two tour guides are Alex and his very old grandfather. Alex is very much into American pop culture which produces may laughs as he attempts to appear "cool" while living in a culture that is not very Americanized. Alex's grandfather, believes himself to be blind, and even has himself a "seeing eye" dog, who really isn't a seeing eye dog, and he drives the Jewish tours although personally he doesn't like Jewish people at all, (where's Mel Gibson in this film when you need him... kidding!)

The film follows the three men around as they search for this mysterious woman, along the way there are quite a few hilarious moments and quite a few rather serious and dramatic ones. Near the end we find out the truth about Jonathan's grandfather and the woman who saved him as well as the reason for Alex's grandfather's hatred of the Jews, which is referenced and played upon throughout the film. At the end the mystery in all three men's lives is "illuminated", hence the reason behind the title of the film.

Overall, Everything Is Illuminated is an interesting film, I found it much more entertaining than I expected, although as is typical with independent films this movie does tend to drag at times, but it’s not too bad. I didn't particularly like the ending of the film, mainly what they did with the grandfather's character; I thought they took it a little to the extreme. The story really conforms to a broad spectrum, while the beginning is incredibly hilarious the ending is actually quite sad, with a middle that is rather slow. In the end it's well worth a watch, personally I think the character of Alex made the movie as his character was very well written and made the film both hilarious and entertaining. 

8/10