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| Wednesday, August 31, 2005 |
Everything isn't quite illuminated
As a rule, literary adventures are not always easily translated to the silver screen. That's not to say a film is never as good as the book. In some respects, the limitations of film can make the story even better than its more sprawling literary counterpart. The key is in making the right decisions about what to cut, what to rework, where to add, and ultimately how the characters and plotline will be visualized on screen.
Do it right, and you'll have a good book adaptation, to say nothing of a great film. Do it wrong, however, and you end up with something else entirely. Most such films, as it turns out, fall somewhere between the gems and the gawdawfuls.
Such is the directorial debut of Liev Schreiber, a film adaptation of Jonathan Safran Foer's much-celebrated authorial debut, Everything is Illuminated. One wonders if an excellent book given even a mediocre film adaptation doesn't ultimately yield a good film, because that is exactly what we have here.
First things first; Schreiber deserves considerable credit for even attempting an adaptation of so oddly-structured a book. It revolves around the search of a fictional Foer who goes to the Ukraine in search of the woman who saved his grandfather from the Holocaust. With him is a highly amusing (and somewhat ignorant) translator and said translator's deranged grandfather (and dog -- let us not forget the dog). But in the novel, the story is told through letters from the translator to Foer interspersed with Foer writing about the history of his family's shtetl before the war. Just for the hell of it, the translator (a.k.a. Alex) proceeds to comment on Foer's history.
Wisely, Schreiber dumped pretty much everything except the central "rigid search" undertaken by Foer & Co. The problem is that's only so much of a story, so Schreiber's script ties in fragments of the book's greater depth towards the end. That's fine and good, so far as it goes, but for those who haven't read the novel it all comes off as little more than a twist ending (and a stretch at that). Some in the screening I attended were even a little confused about how everybody fit together.
Nevertheless, Everything is Illuminated remains a fine film. It is by no means a great film, probably not as good a movie as the book is a novel, but you shouldn't stay away. Schreiber's script is uneven (some critics made the same complaint about the book), but his directing of the actors is seemingly deft and the cinematography is downright literary in its fragile beauty. Add in Elijah Wood (who's as gifted a young actor as they come) and a brilliantly comedic portrayal of translator Alex by Eugene Hutz and you've got a recipe for good cinema.
Then, finally, there is the moral conclusion of the film. The lesson extrapolated by the woman Foer searches for, all embodied in a wedding ring, buried inside a glass jar by a young Jewish woman who knew her fate and faced it. I won't give it away, but I will say it is a distinctly Jewish lesson and it almost makes up for the confusing twist of narrative conclusions at the end.
>> For more on Everything is Illuminated, read AJL's profile on Liev Schreiber, exclusively in our latest issue.
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