Everything is illuminated

Wonderful film. Not everyone agrees, of course. In the NYT, AO Scott pans it: Mr. Foer's verbal and imaginative energies brought him close to succeeding. Mr. Schreiber, plucking a single thread of the novel's interwoven narratives, shows himself to be a sincere and serious reader, but his effort at translation does not quite work. Taken on its own, without comparison with its literary source, the movie, Mr. Schreiber's first as writer and director, is thin and soft, whimsical when it should be darkly funny and poignant when it should be devastating.

Roger Ebert liked it: 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. For Grandfather, this is as much a journey of discovery as it is for Jonathan, and the changes that take place within him are all the more profound for never once being referred to in his dialogue. He never discusses his feelings or his memories, but in a way he is the purpose of the whole trip. The conclusion he draws from it is illustrated in an image that, in context, speaks more eloquently than words.  'Everything is Illuminated" is a film that grows in reflection. The first time I saw it, I was hurtling down the tracks of a goofy ethnic comedy when suddenly we entered dark and dangerous territory. I admired the film but did not sufficiently appreciate its arc. I went to see it again at the Toronto Film Festival, feeling that I had missed some notes, had been distracted by Jonathan's eyeglasses and other relative irrelevancements (as Alex might say). The second time, I was more aware of the journey Schreiber was taking us on, and why it is necessary to begin where he begins in order to get where he's going.

Along the way there are some gems, a lot of humor (especially in the early parts), and a lot of beautiful countryside.

They travel, grandfather Alex driving, grandson Alex riding shotgun, Jonathan in the back seat with Sammy Davis Jr. Jr. At one juncture they pass by an old concrete box of a building, many windows broken, seemingly abandoned. Jonathan asks about it.

"Soviet," says Alex.
"What happened?" asks Jonathan.
"Independence."

As they seek out the woman in a faded photograph that Jonathan carries, a memento from his grandmother, showing his grandfather and a woman that grandmother told him saved his grandfather, they are hurtling into the past. When Jonathan remarks that his grandmother told him that Ukrainians were so anti-Semitic, that, at first, Jews thought the Germans might be an improvement, Alex is incredulous. He asks his own grandfather about that, and grandfather Alex says nothing, but his haunted look speaks to something his silence does not. But, what is it? Was he a Nazi collaborator? Or?

In the end, the answer is obvious. I cringed several times at the sight of German soldiers loading bullets into their rifles, Jews lined up mere yards away, about to be massacred. Yet the sounds never appeared; that technique worked beautifully: there is no need to state, let alone overwork, the obvious: Nazis killed Jews. But other things happened, too. The film tells one such story.