An obsessive artifacts collector from America, a break-dancing Russian translator, a crotchety old soldier who claims to be blind (but isn’t) and a demonic “seeing eye bitch” named Sammy Davis Jr. Jr. go on a road trip … while it sounds like the set-up for a surrealist joke, it’s actually the central storyline of actor-turned-director Liev Schreiber’s wonderful adaptation of the celebrated novel by Jonathan Safran Foer.
Elijah Wood makes us forget all about Frodo as the bespectacled socially awkward author who packs a lone black suit and heads to the Ukraine in the hopes of tracking down the woman who saved his grandfather from the Nazis during the Holocaust. His “tour guides” are a grandfather and grandson team from Odessa who shuttle Jonathan across the Ukrainian countryside — the film was actually shot just outside Prague — in a broken-down Trabant with the dog. As Alex, a hilarious 20-something FUBU-wearing Russian enamored of American consumer culture, Eugene Hutz (better known to hipsters as the lead singer of the gypsy punk outfit Gogol Bordello) practically steals the entire movie out from under his co-stars with a dynamic performance worthy of an Oscar nomination. Veteran Boris Leskin also is very good as the grumpy grandfather whose unexpected encounter with painful, long-forgotten memories ultimately lead to his salvation.
As directorial debuts go, Schreiber’s remarkably assured work here rates among the very finest. “Everything is Illuminated” is funny and dramatic and thought provoking — a beautifully composed, powerfully moving film about the healing power of love. (Rated PG-13 for disturbing images/violence, sexual content and language. Running time: 100 minutes)
Originally published in the Santa Monica Daily Press print edition on September 16, 2005. Read the original PDF.