EVERYTHING IS ILLUMINATED
US, 2005, 106 minutes, Colour.
Elijah Wood, Eugene Hutz, Boris Leskin.
Directed by Liev Schreiber.
A young Jewish New Yorker is told that ‘everything is illuminated by the past’.
We have come to realise ever more deeply that our quest for being as fully human as we can possibly be is to be grounded in our roots. We have a need to go back into our family tree, our ancestry. We feel the need to probe the secrets and mysteries we have inherited so that we can understand ourselves better. We need to achieve some kind of emotional balance. These themes are at the core of Everything is Illuminated.
Talented actor Liev Schreiber (The Manchurian Candidate) has adapted a novel by Jonathan Safran Foer and directed this film. It is a restrained and sometimes muted portrait of the New Yorker and the story of his visit to the Ukraine to find his grandfather’s village.
The early sequences establish Jonathan Safran Foer’s situation. He is an extremely buttoned-up young man, always formally dressed with thick-rimmed glasses. He is photographed to look uncannily like Cary Grant – though his behaviour is more of a constricted Clark Kent. He is an inveterate collector. He souvenirs everything, especially about his heritage and his past, and plastic bags them and pins them on his overcrowded notice board. When his dying grandmother gives him a photo and a brooch, he decides that he will go to seek his roots. Foer is played by an ultra-serious, scarcely smiling Elijah Wood.
Meanwhile in Odessa, where a strict father can scarcely tolerate his earring-wearing, American music-loving son, Alex, Foer’s request for their Jewish heritage-seeing service is taken up by Alex’s grandfather. The journey takes them into the Ukrainian countryside (where most people treat intruders from the city and overseas with indifference or hostility). After several dead ends and basic accommodation and food (especially for vegetarian Foer who baffles the meat-devouring locals), they find a woman who is able to shed light on the story and show them the site of the village and reveal the appalling massacre of over a thousand people by the Nazis.
As it turns out, it is a journey of revelation for the grandfather, a time for confronting his own past.
Eugene Hutz is persuasive as the awkward Alex, full of ambitions (and unfettered by memories of the Communist past) and is a foil to Elijah Wood’s earnestly prim Foer. Schreiber has written an elegiac piece and it is photographed accordingly in muted colours. It invites its audience into an unfamiliar world but challenges them to appreciate Jewish suffering and the universal desire to discover roots.
1.The original book? A memoir by Jonathan Safran Foer? His work as a journalist? His search for his ancestors?
2.The New York setting, the 21st century? Foer as a journalist, his work?
3.The contrast with the Ukraine, Kiev, the streets, the seedier side of the city? The Ukrainian countryside? The village, the search for the site? The river? The musical score?
4.Jonathan and his personality, uptight, his suit, his glasses, bookish? His being a collector? The range of items that he kept in his bags? To what purpose?
5.The title? The traditional Yiddish meaning? In terms of Jonathan’s search?
6.Jonathan and his grandmother, her death? The American Jewish community? His Jewish heritage? His decision to search for the woman who saved his grandfather from the Nazis? His trip to the Ukraine?
7.The background of the Ukraine, Kiev, the city? Meeting Alex? Alex and his enthusiasm, his odd English? His job as accompanying Jonathan? His translator? The bond between the two, the odd adventures? The Laurel and Hardy-type comparison between the two?
8.The trip to find the village? The flashbacks, the Nazis, the 1940s and the war, Jonathan’s grandfather, Augustine? The treatment of the villagers by the Nazis?
9.The driver, Alex’s grandfather, his attitude towards the past, the anti-Semitic touches, his cynicism, his pretending to be blind, his guide dog and his complaints? An idiosyncratic character? His contribution to the search?
10.Alex’s grandfather and his flashbacks, the Nazis, the shooting of the Jewish man, the star on his jacket? His advice about searching for a house, the sunflowers?
11.The difficulties in finding the village, the trek through the woods, finding the house? Meeting the elderly woman? Her turning out to be Augustine’s sister? Her being the only survivor of the massacre in the village?
12.Jonathan, the information from the old lady, the story of his grandfather, the massacre in the village, the grandfather finding a home, taking Augustine, her being pregnant?
13.Her memories of Alex’s grandfather – and the contrast between the two elderly men?
14.Finding the lost village, Alex’s grandfather, his being before the firing squad, his escape and survival? The irony of his suicide after the trip to the village?
15.Alex, his life in Kiev, his hopes and ambitions, his comic style, a future?
16.Jonathan, the completion of his mission, his collecting the information, the effect on him and his understanding of his family, his heritage? His future?
