Everything Is Illuminated
Combined review of the novel by Jonathan Safran Foer & Liev Schreiber’s 2005 film
The story is presented as a fictitious autobiography of a man also named Jonathan Safran Foer and his correspondence with his Ukrainian translator, Alexander (self-described as a “Premium person”), as they write about their shared experience when trying to find Augustine, a woman photographed with Foer’s grandfather in a shtetl that no longer exists.
Accompanying them on their journey is Alex’s blind-but-not-really grandfather (as their driver) and his ‘seeing eye bitch’ Sammy Davis Junior, Jr. We simultaneously view the backstories of Foer (all the way back until his great-great-great-great grandmother) and Alex’s grandfather; both of whom eventually come under the attack of Germany’s Nazi Army.
The characters give each other a complimenting sort of push and pull, eventually illuminating everything.
I finished reading this after about 3 months of slugging through it. It wasn’t so much that the book was slow, or that I was slow; but that I was sort of trying to distance myself from the eventual outpouring of emotion that will surely happen if I were to read it at my normal pace.
Foer has a sort of gift to him that makes me feel some type of way whenever I read about his characters, despite the fact that I usually have nothing in common with them in any objective way. And yet, I found myself enthralled and crying over simple, punctuationless sentences that painted so vividly, the wild and pulling desperation of watching someone you love being taken.
And no amount of distancing myself prepared me for that.
He takes these two characters, so different from each other (one always collecting the past for the present, and the present for the future; and the other never thinking of looking back) and pushes them on this bizarre pilgrimage to the past they didn’t know they shared. All the characters have a roundness to them, burdened by their own demons and unfulfilled wishes, making you root for them despite their inherent shortcomings.
“They laughed together. Nervous laughter. Starting with small giggles. Summing. Louder laughter. Multiplying. Even louder. Squaring. Laughter between gasps. Uncontrollable laughter. Violent. Infinite.”
–Everything Is Illuminated, Jonathan Safran Foer
Elijah Wood’s awkward but determined interpretation of Foer, and Eugene Hutz’s honest and endearing depiction of Alexander were able to play off one another the way the characters were written to. The rest of the cast pulled their weight when it came to illustrating the story as well as they could, but the script (and possibly the budget itself –seeing as it was an independent film) made the overall representation of the book merely skin and bones.
The amazingly crafted backstory of Foer’s family was completely cut out, leaving only the physical roadtrip itself, and the short, unexplained flashbacks of Alex’s grandfather (Boris Leskin).
That being said, the cinematography was beautiful (having it filmed in the Ukraine was a huge plus) and the use of Ukrainian music was a nice touch. I couldn’t help but feel though, for those who did not read the book, that these people would be horribly lost as to the point of the entire story.
Though the last scene did a good job in wrapping it up, it just left me feeling hollow.
All in all, the movie is a good footnote to have if you were having a hard time picturing the part of the story that was set in the present, and gives you a glimpse at Alex’s relationship between him and his grandfather.
Book Rating: ★★★★✩
Film Rating: ★★★✩✩
