Everything Is Illuminated (2005) Movie Review

My grandmother died when I was young and I was never blessed with the opportunity to get to know her the way I would have liked. Because of this, I cherish the only thing I have from her, a family spaghetti sauce recipe she brought over from Italy . It is this same idea which is at the heart of Everything Is Illuminated, an oddball film which gives off the surreal fantasy feeling of a film like Amelie with the edition of Ali G style comedy. The absurdity of this combination is what makes the film work, but it is also the reason it never quite succeeds in either direction.

Jonathan Safran Foer, played by an extremely stoic Elijah Wood, witnessed the death of his grandfather when he was young and as a result he begins collecting family heirlooms as a way to catalog the existence of his heritage. Before his grandmother dies years later, she gives him a picture of his grandfather and a young woman in the Ukraine . All he is told about her is that she saved his grandfather's life during the war, so Jonathan decides to take a journey to solve the mystery of this woman.

Jonathan is guided by Alex, a hip-hop influenced wannabe who speaks in broken English, and his delusional grandfather who believes himself to be blind despite the fact that he is the driver. The three of them set off on a road trip with a crudely titled seeing-eye dog named Sammy Davis Jr. Jr., intent on finding a town which nobody has heard of which may or may not lead them to the mystery woman. The journey leads them further into the country and the situations become more bizarre and absurd as the three begin to bond with each experience.

Jonathan's subtle and quirky humor collides head on with the much more direct approach of the bilingual narrator, Alex. It is somewhat disarming at first to see these opposite comedic styles combined in one film but by the end they have blended together rather easily, mostly due to the face that the humor fades away gradually. Once the humor is gone, Illuminated flirts with melodramatics, never quite becoming unbelievable but also never fully able to make the situation as captivating as it is with humor. It seems as though Everything is Illuminated is one of the rare situation in which a film would be better if it were less original. If the two styles had been separated, or one of them completely removed, the film would have been like many others before it, but it also would have been a stronger film. While there is some admiration for originality, it can only take a film so far.

This is the second film with Wood to be released recently and although they both take place in Europe , they could not be more different. Behind giant lenses in the glasses he wears the entire film; Wood's eyes are magnified a great deal. This works well as he is playing a character who observes more than anything else. Glasses aside, Wood still seems more comfortable in this role than as a tough American tourist in Green Street Hooligans. There is a peaceful believability to the way Wood moves throughout the scenes, as well as a deep sadness which cannot and should not fully be explained. It is a melancholic sadness which fills the film to the last frame, although it is also one that is easy understood even when it cannot be explained. This is where Illuminated truly is a success.