Movies You May Have Missed: Everything is Illuminated

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            This movie is based off the book of the same title, written by the author Jonathan Safran Foer. The story follows the character, Jonathan Safran Foer, a young Jewish American as he travels to Ukraine to find the woman that saved his grandfather during the holocaust. Jonathan is a collector of family artifacts, therefore he has an ever-growing collection of trinkets and do-dads; all stored in plastic baggies
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            Jonathan is accompanied by Alex, a Ukrainian translator with a penchant for American hip hop that seems to have learned his English from a thesaurus. “Please forgive me of my English, Jonathan, as I’m not so premium with it.” Their driver is Alex’s grandfather, Alex; an anti-Semite who started a business that gives tours to American Jews. From the despair of losing his wife, he claims to have gone blind. This is why he is always accompanied by his “seeing eye bitch”, Sammy Davis Jr. Jr.

            This film walks the fine line between the absurd and the heart wrenching; often times getting off the tightrope and straddling it, stepping on both sides. As I watched the movie the first time, I couldn’t help but think that the oddities to the movie would make a great book. So I read the book. There are certain things that the movie provides that the book can’t. Along the “rigid trek”, the countryside becomes an additional character, something that can’t really be shown in the book. The book and movie are actually quite different. The aspect that I like the most about the book is its self-reflective and self-aware nature. The story would stop and the author would become a character. While the movie likes this aspect, I like both mediums equally. After watching the movie, I find myself a bit melancholy with a smile on my face.