History Detectives
'Families grapple with the past in wry, poignant 'Everything Is Illuminated'

The journey of grandsons struggling to comprehend the alien world of their grandfathers lies at the heart of Everything Is Illuminated, an often buoyantly funny, yet deeply moving tale of family history and identity.

Actor Liev Schreiber makes his feature directing debut; he also wrote the script, from the bestselling 2002 novel by Jonathan Safran Foer, which Schreiber adapts with a deft and thoughtful touch. While the novel tells parallel stories set in both past and present, Schreiber wisely sticks to the modern-day track about an American in Russia, searching for his family roots. The setting is contemporary, but the past is palpable in every frame, waiting not only to be discovered, but to illuminate the present.

Elijah Wood (his uncanny blue eyes magnified by Coke-bottle horn rim glasses) plays a protagonist named Jonathan Safran Foer. With his rigidly upright posture and impassive face, Jonathan is a reserved young American Jew, obsessed with collecting castoff objects associated with members of his family—a pendant, a handful of earth, his late grandmother's false teeth. Each item is ziplocked into a plastic bag and hung up on Jonathan's wall, near a photo of the person to whom it belonged, random pieces of a puzzle waiting to be solved.

On her deathbed, his grandmother gives him an old photograph of his grandfather as a young man, standing with a mysterious young woman in an open field near their shtetl in the Ukraine before the war. With only the name of the village and the woman's first name to go on, Jonathan flies to the Ukraine and books a tour guide to help him find the village and identify the woman.

Enter Alex (Eugene Hutz), a young Odessa hipster in a nylon track suit and beret, who loves American hip-hop, idolizes Michael Jackson, and likes to bust moves on the dance floor like a Ukrainian Tony Manero. It's Alex who narrates the story, in his plummy, Russo-flavored brand of English. Alex's father runs a touring company (a single, decrepit Trabant car) for "rich American Jews" who come to Russia to search for their "dead families."

Alex is dispatched to the train station to meet Jonathan. Alex's grandfather (Boris Levin) is the designated driver, a crotchety old man in an undershirt who claims to be blind, and refuses to go anywhere without his "seeing-eye bitch," a snarling mutt he calls Sammy Davis Jr. Jr. It's not an auspicious beginning for Jonathan, who's terrified of dogs, leery of a "blind" driver, and unnerved by Alex's gregariousness. The Ukrainians, in turn, are flummoxed that Jonathan doesn't eat meat.

The movie might have continued on in this mildly amusing, culture-clash vein. But it has a much larger and richer story to tell, as the mismatched trio heads out into the countryside to search for a village none of the locals have ever even heard of. This is a green, lush Russian countryside, not the bleak Soviet cityscapes of so many other Russian films. (In fact, Schreiber shot the film in and around Prague.) But the idyllic landscape conceals dark secrets of Nazi invaders, anti-Semitism, courage, and tragedy (alluded to in delicate, impressionistic flashbacks). Along the way, both Jonathan and Alex come to terms with their grandfathers, their family history, and themselves.

Schreiber never lets the comedy turn silly, so the story earns resonance as it embraces its more serious theme: rapprochement between the generations over the past which shapes them all, however much it's been denied or concealed. Yet the film has a sprightly, impish air throughout. The finale at a remote cottage in a field of towering sunflowers (actually planted by the film crew) is heartbreaking and healing. And a wry coda suggests that however strange people seem to be in a foreign country—or the equally foreign country of the past—we are all one people, one world, past, present and into the future.

In an excellent cast, the real find is Hutz, a Russian-born New Yorker who fronts the "gypsy punk rock band" Gogol Bordello. Hutz has never acted before, but his expressive features and jaunty effusiveness as Alex give the movie an irresistible spirit.

EVERYTHING IS ILLUMINATED With Elijah Wood, Eugene Hutz, and Boris Leskin. Written and directed by Live Schreiber. A Warner Independent release. Rated PG-13. 104 minutes. (***1/2)
Review published in Good Times, Sept. 29, 2005