Everything Is Illuminated 2005
This is very much a first-time indie movie. Everything about it screams amateur and self-conscious precociousness. But because of that, it also lets you know that you need to lower your guard a little and let yourself be entertained by something heartfelt and different. The movie never really moves all that fast, but it is especially slow during the first half with very little dialogue. A road movie centered around a crabby old man, his obnoxious Ukrainian grandson, and the painfully weird American jew played by Elijah Wood, Everything Is Illuminated isn’t easy to like. But eventually the characters do develop and even grow on you as they journey looking for Wood’s grandfather’s hometown. There is some intrigue as the crabby grandfather’s secret is slowly revealed. And then everything ends up revisiting the holocaust, as the Germans overran the Ukraine and wiped out all of the Jews they could find. So you have this weird, quirky, sometimes funny movie that ends with a heavy weight at the end. Though the movie indulges a little too much, I didn’t mind this ride through the Ukrainian countryside, but I didn’t particularly like it either. B-.
Written: 25 Aug 2007