Everything is Illuminated review
Issue #25
Directed by Liev Schreiber
By Rebecca Flint-Marx
Published: September 1st, 2005 | 2:35pm
Full disclosure: I have not read Everything is Illuminated, the idiosyncratic meta-novel that established Jonathan Safran Foer as a wee wunderkind. So whether Liev Schreiber’s adaptation of Foer’s book is as faithful, satisfying, or complete as its fans might hope, I can’t say. But I can say that as a movie, it’s a solid, competent effort, as neat and tidy as its protagonist’s suit, tie, and meticulously parted hair.
That protagonist is played by Elijah Wood, who makes a convincing replica of both the author and his fictional eponym (also named Jonathan Safran Foer), right down to his toggled coat and stammering admission that when it comes to sex, he’s not a priest, but he’s “not John Holmes,” either. As Foer, he is on a journey through the Ukraine, searching for his grandfather’s long-lost ancestral town and the woman who may have had some hand in his escape from the Nazis. Along for the ride — or more accurately supplying the ride — are Alex (Eugene Hutz), the film’s narrator, his cantankerous, dubiously blind grandfather (Boris Leskin), and Sammy Davis Junior Junior, his grandfather’s half-crazed “seeing-eye bitch.”
Although Wood gets top billing here, he’s something of an empty vessel, more a set of affectations than a full-blooded character. Hutz, however, more than adequately fills the void. The lead singer of the gypsy punk outfit Gogol Bordello, Hutz is making his acting debut here. If the charisma he exhibits is any indication, he may have an interesting screen career ahead of him. As Alex, he’s decked out in gold chains and a furry Kangol cap, a playuh (in his own fantasies) from Odessa who speaks a highly idiosyncratic (and less than plausible) brand of English. Hutz lets him swagger while resisting the lure of caricature, making Alex the film’s most consistently vibrant presence.
One can’t help but think that Schreiber, a celebrated actor making his directing and screenwriting debut, had a hand in eliciting such a natural, nuanced performance. He lets his actors and the narrative lope along at an agreeable, un-showy pace. So many book-to-screen adaptations suffer from a kind of inferiority complex that results a suffocating deference to their source material. Schreiber, mercifully, is confident enough to illuminate Foer’s story in his own way.
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