the audience applauded

Memorable, crazy movie

Lack of good storyline.

Clever, believable, and super fun to watch. It totally has replay value.

During the "Lord of the Rings" trilogy, Elijah Wood was the performer that everyone watched old and young alike. In 2005, Wood had two movies that exhibited his charismatic appeal. His expression have always been louder than his words and he proves it through all his performances. The first one being "Green Street Holligans", Wood focuses the attention of how vicious soccer fans can be, especially in Great Britain. Here in "Everything is Illuminated", he visits Ukraine who may have been emancipated from Soviet rule, but the damage from the second World War still lingers on.Wood plays the role of Jonathan, an eccentric young gentleman who seems to be mysteriously immaculately dressed, clad in suits and dons big Coke-bottle glasses and has a unorthodox way of collecting things he's experienced in life. Stuff like rock or dirt from the places he's visited or jewelry that traces back to his family's past. The opening scene features his dying grandmother where she hands him an old photo taken a long time ago in Ukraine. The man in the picture is his grandfather, but the woman in the photograph is a mystery.Because Jonathan's hobby is looking into the past, he journey to Ukraine to search for this mystery woman. Jonathan recruits a Michael Jackson fan and a self-proclaimed chick magnet named Alex (Eugene Hutz), his grandfather (Boris Leskin) who fakes his blindness even though he's the driver of a car and a crazy seeing eye dog.Based on a novel by Jonathan Safran Foer and directed by Liev Schreiber "Everything is Illuminated" has everything it has for a screwball comedy in which almost all the characters are a bit kooky. Some of the scenes featured can be quite surreal at times. Like for instance Jonathan is a vegetarian and yet he's situated in place where everyone of it's residence eats and consumes meat. They enter a diner and the owner refuses to serve him a potato unless he has it with a side of meat.Just when you think the film was losing its spark, it starts to become more serious than one could imagine. It becomes obvious that the village where Jonathan's grandfather grew up in has become expunged. The mystery reveals that Jonathan's grandfather once lived in a small Jewish town that was vanished off the face of the Earth by the Nazi's during World War II and has become unmentioned by the present-day Ukranians.I usually have my doubts about actors/actresses directing for the first time, but here I think Schreiber actually did a very good job here. The imagery and the settings really set the tone quite subliminally here. From the grave of classic war apparatuses to a field of gorgeous sunflowers, this movie demonstrates that no matter where we live and who we are, there will always be a connection.

This is the only film directed by Liev Schreiber, better known as an actor, and he also wrote the screenplay. The film is truly a work of genius, and no wonder he has not been able to direct again, as he is so superior to the competition that everyone must hate him. The film is hilariously funny, tragically sad, heart-rending, and inspirational. It is based upon a novel by Jonathan Safran Foer, who also wrote the novel of EXTREMELY LOUD AND INCREDIBLY CLOSE (2011, see my review), another overwhelmingly emotional movie about a child looking for meaning in the face of tragedy, just as the star of this film, Elijah Wood, is also doing. There is a concealed mystical undertone to this film. Wood dreams that he is standing beside a small river in the moonlight. Later, when he finds what he is looking for, he is standing looking at that same river in the moonlight as foreseen in his dream. A recurring theme of the film is 'illumination', represented by screen white-outs at crucial moments. In early Christianity, the sacrament of baptism was not called baptism, it was called 'illumination', the Greek word for that being phōtismos. And in one ancient manuscript of the gospel account of Jesus being baptized in the River Jordan we find this sentence, which does not appear in the New Testament as printed: 'When he was baptized, a vast light arose from the water and shone round him.' (translation by the famous Biblical scholar Gilles Quispel) That is certainly a more convincing account than the one of a dove descending from heaven, as it is a light-phenomenon rather than the miraculous intrusion of a bird in the story. And in Gnostic Christianity, Jesus was a 'son of Mary' (notice that Joseph is not mentioned) who was 'transformed by illumination', which made him a Son of God. Light imagery is thus fundamental to the origins of Christianity from Judaism, and 'illumination' is at the heart of it all. Also identified with 'illumination' was the process of anointing with sacred oil. The word 'Messiah' means 'anointed one' in Hebrew, and its direct Greek translation is Christos, so that 'Christ' means 'Messiah' in Greek, in other words, 'the anointed one' and is not a name, and is once again a signifier of 'illumination'. However, enough of these theological explications. The performances in this film are truly brilliant and extraordinary, the best of all being the Ukrainian grandfather, who despite barely speaking, gives a performance so moving in its pathos and intensity that he makes you want to weep. He is played by the elderly Russian actor Boris Leskin. His story, as eventually revealed, is intensely tragic. His grandson, the cheerful young Ukrainian tour guide, is played by Ukrainian actor and musician Eugene Hutz with such incredible comic bravura that there is barely any time between all the laugh-out-loud moments in the first half of the film. It is not enough to know Eastern European exiles, who have lost all their humour, one has to know contemporary Eastern Europeans to appreciate the utterly hilarious aspects of this film, as so spectacularly brought to the screen by the amazing Hutz. I fear the extraordinary humour of this film is so subtle and sophisticated that it may have gone way over the heads of many Americans, being so very European in nature that Americans would be uncertain as to whether they dare laugh in all the right places. The scene where Elijah Wood announces that he is a vegetarian is typical both of the Ukraine and of the clash of cultures, yielding belly laughs aplenty. The Czech author Karel Capek's gnomic humour in FAIRY TALES and WAR WITH THE NEWTS closely resembles the tone of this film's humour, which comes deep from the Eastern European psyche, and is a product of the wry witticisms needed to cope with living for decades under a succession of oppressive dictatorships. But there is nothing funny about the Nazi story which comes to light in the latter half of this film, as grim realizations come to the fore. The Polish actress Laryssa Lauret is magnificent as the surviving sister of the mysterious Augustina for whom Elijah Wood is searching, armed with an old photograph given to him by his grandmother on her deathbed in America. Wood himself is perfect for the lead part, with his weird appearance and eyes which look like those of an alien, greatly magnified with powerful spectacles, so that his every puzzlement becomes the size of the screen. He plays a frozen character who cannot show or display emotion but who is making a 'rigid search of the past' in order to comprehend the present. The film articulates its message by saying that the past lives in us, and we become illuminated by revealing, discovering, and understanding it. The editing of this film, which was shot entirely on location in the Ukraine, by Andrew Marcus and Craig McKay, is superb, and the intercutting of the expressions of the face of the dog who also stars in the film contribute greatly to the hilarity of the comedy. All the comic moments are cut perfectly to maximize the laughs. The 'deranged dog' of the story is an especially brilliant comic touch. And there is mystery too: where is the mysterious village of Trachimbrod? Why do none of the locals in the remote regions of the Ukraine know of it? What has happened to its inhabitants, which once included Elijah Wood's grandfather? Who, what, and where is or was Augustina? Illumination comes when all is revealed in this hysterically funny and pathetically tragic tale where the transcendent things are brought to light and the internal man 'turns inside out'. If only there were more films as profound, funny, and sad as this one. Let us hope that Liev Schreiber gets another chance to make one, bedazzling us again.

Everything is Illuminated is far better than I was expecting, it's nearly impeccable.The story is about a young man who pays for a guide to help him find the woman who saved his father from death during WWII. He embarks on a journey with a guy and his grandfather.Eugene Hutz is absolutely hilarious and his accent is amazing. He definitely was a great choice, not sure why they chose a musical artist, but he definitely was the best choice for all the right reasons. Elijah Wood does great portraying his character, the sophisticated young American.Although you will enjoy this film, it should be noted that the comedy is extremely apparent in the first half of the film, but it slowly dims down, then dies altogether as the film transitions into a more dramatic story. You should think of this film as a Comedy -> Comedy/Drama -> Drama, in that precise order.Enjoy it for what it is, and enjoy the artistic value of such a film.

I'll do my best to review this as a work of its own rather than to the source material. It always irritates me when a decent movie is repeatedly bashed for straying from the book/comic/what-have-you it was inspired by.As a film in its own right, Everything is Illuminated is slightly above average. The cinematography is passable. The seldom beautiful shot caught my attention.The music conveys emotion and the theme of the film splendidly. It suits all moments accurately and was enough to move me during the climax. All the acting is top-notch. Elijah Wood captures the character of Jonathan. But every powerful moment feels a little watered down and robbed of its true potential. This is attributed to the absence of most of the backstory. The context of our characters journey is lightly hinted at throughout, but the viewers never fully connect to the reasons for our character's actions. Everything is Illuminated, the movie, is only about an hour and a half long. Average for modern day films, but it would be twice as long if it had included segments told by Jonathan about his family's history. I would have preferred that. The most tearjerking parts of the book take place in these segments that were woefully excluded from the film.For what it is, Everything is Illuminated is adequate. Sadly it doesn't exceed in any one area to make it stand out. For that i give it a 6 out of 10