Everything is Illuminated

 "Everything is Illuminated" is a Liev Schreiber's film based on the book by Jonathan Safran Foer under the same title.  The title of the film refers to the way the past emits light onto the present.  True to the book, the film reshapes the dark history of the past with acceptance and forgiveness in the present.

Elijah Wood plays Jonathan Safran Foer, a young American writer preoccupied with his family past. Intrigued by the keepsakes left behind by his grandfather, who managed to escape the Nazis as a young man, Jonathan embarks on a trip in search of the village where his grandfather lived.

Jonathan's guide is a young man from Odessa named Alex.  He is played by Eugene Hutz, a singer and composer of the critically-acclaimed New York Gypsy Punk rock band Gogol Bordello, who left Ukraine at the age of 14.  A seven-year exit through East European refugee camps provided Hütz with experience that is well reflected in Alex’s character as a Ukranian smitten by everything American. 

Jonathan is the exact opposite of Alex – a vegetarian boy, reserved, with neatly parted hair, black suit and white button-down shirt, he looks like he came from the 1960s and could star in the Mad Men episodes.  In contrast, Ukrainian Alex is a confident break dancer, decked out in gold chains and Adidas tracksuit, who spews English in broken translations of slang and proclaims: "Many girls want to be carnal with me because I'm such a premium dancer."

Accompanied by Alex's grandfather, a grumpy old man who works as a chauffeur for Americans on tours of their ancestral villages, and a dog named Sammy Davis Jr., Jr., Jonathan and Alex engage in a search for the vanished Ukrainian town, which reveals hidden sides to every one's character. 

Narrated through reminiscent shots of Ukrainian landscapes (filmed in Czeck Republic), this journey evokes a deep emotional response to historical references of the destruction of Ukraine's Jews. The film chooses to intersperse the devastation of the Holocaust with whimsical humor of the present that is comparable to comedic outbreaks used in the Italian film “Life is Beautiful”.  Exposing, but brushing over survivor's guilt, the film does not linger on the hard topics, turning rediscovered past crimes into forgiveness, to be further forgotten with time.

Although not critically acclaimed as an creative achievement, this film is moving, humorous and thought provoking.  It made me a little nostalgic as I recalled driving around Ukraine with my parents, down a road with no name, looking for a little tiny town in the middle of nowhere, tracing family’s roots.  


It also reminded me of another road less traveled. 


From a memory came this poem:

The day is lived through
But it's not too late
Come in - I say;
And you believe me

You shed a coat
Through narrow doorway
Like naked moon
Squeezes through window

A night is quiet in the background
A lonely voyage, far away
Sings song of love you never found
I listen as you smile and sway

The road is long, it is unknown
It calls to me - I hear it weep
I wait intently and I wonder
How long until my wings are clipped?