DIRECTOR: Liev Schreiber
PRODUCERS: Peter Saraf. Mark Turtletaub
SCREENPLAY:  Jonathan Safran Foer, Liev Schreiber
PHOTOGRAPHY: Matthew Libatique
EDITORS: Andrew Marcus, Craig McKay
MUSIC: Paul Cantelon, Sergei Shnurov
WITH: Elijah Wood (Jonathan), Eugene Hutz (Alex), Boris Lyoskin (Grandfather), Laryssa Lauret (Lista)

REVIEW

“Liev Schreiber’s Everything is Illuminated begins in goofiness and ends in silence and memory. How it gets from one to the other is the subject of the film, a journey undertaken by three men and a dog into the secrets of the past. The movie is narrated by Alex (Eugene Hutz), a Ukranian whose family specializes in “tours of dead Jews.” Alex and his grandfather (also named Alex) drive American Jews in search of their roots to the places where many of their ancestors died.

“The trip through a bewildering but beautiful Ukrainian countryside involves a Soviet-era car that may not exactly have air bags. The grandfather is the driver, although he claims to be blind and insists on going everywhere with his “seeing eye bitch,” whose name is Sammy Davis Junior Junior… 
​
“The movie is based on a novel by Jonathan Safran Foer that reportedly includes many more scenes from the distant past, including some of magic realism in the 18th century Ukrainian Jewish community. Everything is Illuminated lives in the present, except for memories and enigmatic flashbacks to the Second World War. The gift that Schreiber brings to the material is his ability to move us from the broad satire of the early scenes to the solemnity of the final ones… 

​“Everything is Illuminated is a film that grows in reflection…”

— Roger Ebert

FILM SOCIETY SCREENINGS

Hamilton – only at HFS
Monday, 21 September, 6:30pm
WORLD CINEMA >>