Everything Is Illuminated

A journey to Ukraine in search of a family's past. Jonathan is a young man who collects everything. He bags every object left by his family and pins it to the wall. After his grandmother's death he is left with a photograph: the woman who hid his grandfather during the war. He goes to Ukraine to find her. There he is met by a guide service: young Alex, who speaks a very peculiar English, his bad-tempered grandfather at the wheel, and a dog in the back seat. The journey starts as comedy. As the narrative goes on the register changes. The village they are looking for is not on the map, and why becomes clear slowly. The last section of the film concerns the grandfather's own past. The source is Jonathan Safran Foer's novel; the book was built on wordplay and the film carries some of that through Alex's English. Elijah Wood plays Jonathan and the musician Eugene Hutz plays Alex. Liev Schreiber's first film as director. A carefully made example for anyone who likes road films and narratives built on memory. For a viewer expecting comedy, the film turns entirely heavy in its second half and moves away from the humour it starts with.