Everything is Illuminated
Elijah Wood has certainly
gone out of his way not to become typecast. After all, he has been
doing terrific work in the movies since he was a child actor and played bad
seed Macauley Culkin's virtuous friend in The Good Son. However,
playing the role of Frodo Baggins in the phenomenally successful film
adaptations of The Lord of the Rings trilogy is the type of thing
that can ruin an actor's career more easily than hype it, because it is such
an iconic character that some viewers will never be able to see the actor in
any other way.
Probably aware of this, Wood
has picked some oddball but fascinating roles as his follow-ups. He
played a desperately and amorally lovesick loser in the brilliantly surreal
Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. He joined the pulp comic
strip bravado of Sin City.
Now, he plays his most
intriguing, difficult characters yet. Difficult because he is rather
inscrutable and almost completely unable to relate to any human being, all
the while cataloguing his life by putting inanimate objects in baggies and
pinning them to the wall. When asked why he does this odd thing, he
merely shrugs and admits that he is always afraid that he will forget the
moments of his life. However, he does not realize by collecting things
so obsessively, he is allowing life to pass him by while he obsesses about
its minutiae.
Everything Is Illuminated,
based on the autobiographical novel by Jonathan Safran Foer and written and
directed by actor Liev Schrieber (The Manchurian Candidate, Kate and
Leopold) is fascinating just because everyone in it learns giant lessons
and secrets, but Jonathan is still only able to change in little ways
because of his journey. Sometimes you can go
someplace, learn many things and still continue to head down the same path you
originally followed. This is just one of Everything is Illuminated's
fascinating revelations.
This trip is for an
understanding of family history. On her deathbed, Jonathan's
grandmother give him a photograph of his late grandfather in his twenties
with a young woman named Augustina. Jonathan knows little about her
except that she helped his grandfather escape the small Ukranian town of
Trachimbrod
right before the Nazis arrived.
Jonathan decides to fly to
the Ukraine to find the town, which is not on any current map he can find.
He hopes that if he finds the town he may be able to learn the
story of Augustina and his Grandfather. However, he is lost in an area
where he does not speak the language and despite the fact that he is a
vegetarian there is nothing available but meat.
This leads him to the
Perchov family. They are three generations of a family who run a
service for expatriate Jews in which they guide them around the Ukraine in
search of information on last ancestors. This is not really done for
altruistic purposes -- it is early acknowledged by the second generation
Perchov that they just show the rich visitors around, there is never any
information to be found. The business was founded years ago by the
Grandfather, which seems rather odd because now he is angry, cynical and
vaguely anti-Semitic. Grandfather claims that his misery has made him
blind and the family humors him even though he can obviously see, even going
so far as to go to the pound and buy him a deranged dog which the family
calls Sammy Davis Junior Junior (yes, there are two juniors) to be his
"seeing eye bitch."
Grandfather will drive the
expedition, but the actual guide is Alex (a very strong performance by
Eugene Hutz, an acting novice who is the leader of gypsy-punk band Gogol
Bordello). Alex is a young Ukrainian who fancies himself a hip-hop
dancer, walks around in ghetto wear and Kangol hats. Alex takes
charge, is responsible for finding the lost town and translating and keeping
the peace between Jonathan and Grandfather, who will not speak English and
can't understand this odd Jew who will not eat meat and does not like dogs.
As the trip continues, you
come to realize that the Grandfather knows more about the people in the
photograph and Trachimbrod than he is willing to let on. This leads to
some illuminations of his life that make his Grandson realize that
everything he had assumed about the man were false. However, these
revelations are not the obvious ones that the audience brought up on
Hollywood filmmaking might assume, but much more subtle, disturbing and
perplexing ones.
The trip into the past turns
out to be dramatic, funny, quirky and harrowing. I will not tell you
if he finds out who the woman was -- that is one of the little treasures of
this charming film. However, through the voyage, everyone is able to
use the past to rethink their present. It is mostly in subtle, quiet
ways, but some are changed dramatically. Even Sammy Davis Junior
Junior seems to benefit from the trek.
(9/05)
Jay
S. Jacobs
Copyright ©2005
PopEntertainment.com. All rights reserved.
Posted: September
2, 2005.
