After playing Frodo in the “Lord of the Rings” movies, Elijah Wood will have a hard time breaking his hobbit image. His character in “Everything is Illuminated” is a long way from Frodo – modern, Jewish, remote and vegetarian – yet he still winds up on an epic quest involving a ring.
“Everything is Illuminated” is based on a critically hailed novel by Jonathan Safran Foer. The book’s main character happens to be a writer named Jonathan Safran Foer, and he returns to his grandparents’ country, Ukraine, to see where his family came from.
Wood plays Jonathan, a neat, reserved young man in huge eyeglasses. (He looks like Clark Kent.) Jonathan collects artifacts – any stray souvenir imaginable – from his past, as though trying to construct something that will help life make sense.
Most of the film is a journey, as Jonathan has contracted with tour guides who can find the town where his grandparents lived. The Nazis wiped out most traces of the place, so it will take a weekend of looking.
The tour guides are an elderly man (Boris Leskin) and his hyperactive twentysomething grandson, Alex (Eugene Hutz). Alex is a classic would-entrepreneur and con man whose English sounds uncannily like the wild and crazy guys of “Saturday Night Live”: “Many girls want to be carnal with me,” etc.
Alex keeps the movie funny, and Jonathan has a few scenes trying to explain vegetarianism to meat-centric Ukrainians that are deadpan disasters.
| Low-key but well done: Adaptation of Jonathan Safran Foer’s novel, about a writer (Elijah Wood) whose return to his Ukrainian roots is dominated by the local tour guides.
Rated: PG-13 for subject matter. Now showing: Uptown, Seattle. |
The film does have a serious undertone, which comes to the fore as the travelers get closer to the town. We begin to wonder how much the local population knows about the Nazi occupation, and to what extent they were complicit. The film loses some of its originality when it hits this familiar territory.
The actor Liev Schreiber adapted and directed “Everything is Illuminated,” sparked by his own Ukrainian roots. Filming in and around Prague, he brings a steady pace to the storytelling and great attention to the actors.
Elijah Wood is all right, although the role has him so benumbed it’s sometimes hard to see the performance.
The standout it Eugene Hutz, the lead singer of a “Ukrainian gypsy band,” in his first acting role. His fractured English and gung-ho spirit keep this otherwise low-key picture popping.
Talk to us
> Give us your news tips.
> Send us a letter to the editor.
> More Herald contact information.
