AnneCarlini.com Home
 
  Giveaways!
  Insider Gossip
  Monthly Hot Picks
  Book Reviews
  CD Reviews
  Concert Reviews
  DVD Reviews
  Game Reviews
  Movie Reviews
  Check Out The NEW Anne Carlini Productions!
  [NEW] Belouis Some (2024)
  [NEW] Jay Aston’s Gene Loves Jezebel (2024)
  [NEW] Mark Ruffalo (‘Poor Things’)
  [NEW] Paul Giamatti (‘The Holdovers’)
  [NEW] Crystal Gayle
  [NEW] Ellen Foley
  Gotham Knights [David Russo - Composer]
  The Home of WAXEN WARES Candles!
  Michigan Siding Company for ALL Your Outdoor Needs
  MTU Hypnosis for ALL your Day-To-Day Needs!
  COMMENTS FROM EXCLUSIVE MAGAZINE READERS!


©2024 annecarlini.com
6 Degrees Entertainment

'Everything Is Illuminated'
(Eugene Hutz, Elijah Wood, et al / DVD / PG-13 / (2005) 2006 / Warner Bros.)

Overview: Based on the critically-acclaimed novel by Jonathan Safran Foer, "Everything is Illuminated" tells the story of a young man's quest to find the woman who saved his grandfather in a small Ukrainian town that was wiped off the map by the Nazi invasion. What starts out as a journey to piece together one family's story under absurd circumstances turns into a meaningful journey with a powerful series of revelations -- the importance of remembrance, the perilous nature of secrets, the legacy of the Holocaust, and the meaning of friendship.

DVD Verdict: 'Everything is Illuminated' is a bit of a mixed bag. It's a wildly uneven movie that starts off well, and is strafed with a sort of darkly comic irony, but soon descends into an under whelming and rather anemic road movie, where the resolution doesn't nearly pack as much of an emotional punch as it should. Consequently, the film doesn't really satisfy or illuminate. Maybe it has something to so with Live Schreiber's earnest and overly languid direction; there's a lot of warm eccentricity here, but not that much dramatic heft. Based on Jonathan Safran Foer's novel 'Everything is Illuminated,' the film tells of New York writer Jonathan Foer (Elijah Wood), who arrives in Odessa looking for the village of Trachimbrod, and a woman he thinks saved his late grandfather from the Nazis; he is helped by a hip-hop-obsessed young stud named Alex (Eugene Hutz). Alex lives in Odessa and helps to run a family company that drives rich Jews around Ukraine in search of their lost heritage. The car's driver is Alex's dyspeptic grandfather, also named Alex (Boris Leskin) an anti-Semite with a transparently guilty conscience. There's also the grandfather's dog Sammy Davis Jr. Jr. whom he claims to need as a seeing-eye dog, even though he's not blind, being the driver, whom Alex cheerfully calls "deranged," and is actually the cutest thing about the movie. Schreiber wisely gives us lots of Alex and Sammy David Jr. because without their comic relief the film would probably be deadly dull. The charismatic Hutz - in his acting debut here - is about the best thing the film has going for it, especially when one considers the character of Foer. Sticking Wood in a black suit and nerd glasses to accentuate his big blue eyes, and have him walk around like a faulty android comes across as just too weird, This all may be meant to parody the stiffness of Foer, a quietly obsessive collector of family artifacts, but the character seems forced and doesn't sit well, but next to the film's other, wonderfully three-dimensional and realistic characters. The film is lovingly photographed; particularly the lush countryside, and the moments of dreamlike surreal images - a cabin surrounded by an improbably perfect field of giant sunflowers - are handled well. But there isn't enough drama here to sustain an entire film, and Schreiber's direction is just so relentlessly timid and overly cute. That lush soundtrack of traditional music is all right for about half an hour, but rapidly becomes irritating and swells up in all the wrong places. The ideas behind the movie are good - the importance of memory, history and heritage, holding onto the detritus of the past, the necessity of storytelling, and of sifting through and distilling and bringing the imagination to bear on one's past. But Schreiber isn't able to incorporate these ideas into a completely dramatic scenario that resonates with the viewer; consequently the movie remains abstract, rather closed, and almost wimpy. When the eponymous illumination comes and a secret is revealed, it's horrific, but also quite confusing, and even unexpectedly hackneyed. This is a Widescreen Presentation (1.85:1) enhanced for 16x9 TVs and comes with the Special Features of:

Additional Scenes
Theatrical Trailer
Subtitles in English, French and Spanish.

www.WarnerVideo.com





...Archives