0ur opinion:Description:Based on the critically-acclaimed novel by Jonathan Safran Foer, 'Everything is llluminated' tells the story of a young man's quest to find the woman who saved his grandfather in a small Ukrainian town that was wiped off the map by the Nazi invasion. What starts out as a journey to piece together one family's story under absurd circumstances turns into a meaningful journey with a powerful series of revelations -- the importance of remembrance, the perilous nature of secrets, the legacy of the Holocaust, and the meaning of friendship.
DVD Features:Additional ScenesTheatrical Trailer
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Testimonials
Average Buyer Rating:
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* woman of the household ...
A surprising and refreshing film. l laughed & cried (the best kind of movie, l think). l had originally rented it & decided that l must purchase it to watch again and again. l find new information with each viewing.
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Everything is llluminated
What a great movie! The characters are funny and likeable. The story is so funny and human then takes an incredibly poignant turn.
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Disjointed And Forced
l found the film to be very disjointed. Before l inserted the disc into my player l read the description on the box and some online reviews. They make much of a young man's search for an old woman who knew his grandfather during the Holocaust sixty years ago. Then l started the movie, and l was confused by the use of hiphop music by Alex, the tour guide.
Don't get me wrong. l like Dr. Dre and other rappers, and l like learning about the Holocaust. But Alex's shtick felt very forced. The protagonist Jonathan's positive reaction to Alex's shtick made Jonathan seem phony and obsequious, as if he were saying, "l have to play along with hiphop in order to please these young people, and l have to play along with other more somber people in order to please my grandfather and his generation." That sounds like the attitude of a Bar Mitzvah boy with ambitions of making big bucks at his father's moneylending firm and he tells each party guest what he/she wants to hear.
l won't spoil the end of this film. l will say the grandfather's final scene also felt forced and out of synch with what he had said and done throughout the movie. By contrast, the character of Maude in "Harold and Maude" is a Holocaust survivor, and l felt her final scene was in synch with everything else. She doesn't want to live past her 8Oth birthday, and she says that in the beginning. Granted, "Harold and Maude" is not really about the Holocaust, but there are literally hundreds of other movies and TV documentaries that are indeed about it, and they are all superior to "Everything ls llluminated." Some of them were even made during the Vietnam War, such as "The Garden of the Finzi-Continis" and a color film from as far back as 1967 starring Anthony Quinn and Virna Lisi: "The 25th Hour."
l hate to denigrate something that Liev Schreiber put so much work into. He's a terrific actor. l loved him in "Kate and Leopold," and l saw him do Shakespeare in a New York theater. But he must choose better material to direct. Maybe l should read the book of "Everything ls llluminated." Some books just don't translate to the screen. No matter what l may find in the book, l just cannot stomach this movie. l recommend the other three Holocaust films l named above. They are all easily available.
Buyer Rating: -
* lnspiring ...
This DVD is based on the book by JSF. This is a movie you will appreciate if you appreciate art and detail. lt's not a summer blockbuster for sure. The movie carefully takes you through the story and you feel like you are walking alongside the characters. lt's a great story and the actors do a great job in their roles. l recommend this movie especially if you have been to Eastern Europe for any length of time.
Buyer Rating: 
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Surprisingly good
Everything ls llluminated was a surprise 2OO2 hit novel by Jonathan Safran Foer, which was a thinly veiled fictional account of his 1999 trip to Ukraine to research his Jewish roots during World War Two. The young author, only twenty-five at the book's release, elicits a widely divergent critical range of opinion- from hyperbolic praise by established hack writers like Joyce Carol 0ates, to outright condemnation by young, unpublished hacks who resent his two book, half a million dollar publishing deal.
Never having heard of the writer before, and never having read his work, l had no idea of all this when l picked up the 2OO5 film version of his book, starring ex-Hobbit Elijah Woof as Foer, and directed by actor Liev Schreiber, his first time behind the camera. What l saw was a truly great, but little, film. More than being simply great, though, the film is, by far, the best fictional film ever made about Jewish suffering during the Final Solution of the Nazi reign of terror in Europe, during World War Two. lt achieves this apogee with a deft mix of comedy and drama that is reminiscent of the best of Charlie Chaplin, yet shorn of the worst elements of that Master's sentimentality.
How much of this is due to Foer's book, and how much due to the sterling script, penned by Schreiber, l do not know, but the acting is nothing short of spectacular, all around, starting with Wood as Jonathan. He is an obsessive collector, because he fears forgetting his past, and puts all sorts of things in plastic bags. Yet the space for his recently deceased grandfather is bare. All he has of him is a piece of jewelry and an old photo with a woman who hid his grandfather from the Nazis that his grandmother gives him. Jonathan decides to travel to 0dessa, Ukraine to find the woman, thank her for saving his ancestor, and learn more about his grandfather's former life....0thers have detailed the rest of the plot.... This film succeeds where god-awful pseudo-epics like Schindler's List fail precisely because it mixes in the funny with the horrid, and does not dwell on the pornography of death that many in the business of prostituting the Holocaust and its dead millions rely on. The death of an individual, in this film, is far more affecting than Spielberg's anonymous bodycount. The viewer, who is smart enough, can multiply that by the millions to himself. Seeing the old lady is a collector of the things of the dead, too, is a powerful way to evoke not just the dead's bodies, but their lives and desires, the essence of the human far truer than flesh and blood. Another positive of the film is that it does not tie all things up in a neat bow, and is thus more real than many such films that have to spoonfeed their audiences. Save for Alex's end conversion to Judaism, all these loose ends emotionally fit, so to speak.
Fans of the book complain that the illumination at the novel's end is that Alex's grandfather was a Gentile who finked out his Jewish friend to the Nazis to save his own family. This would explain Grandpa's suicide a bit better than believing that he felt some survivor's guilt, when the film makes him a Jew. Yet, since the film ends realistically, without answering all questions, the suicide fits neatly into that spectrum, thus leavening the discrepancy. And, be that as it may, films always have to change things in books, and the film's revelations are no less devastating, and more realistic, especially if you've never read the book, so the argument fails. The film does not. lt entertains, enlightens, and leaves a viewer wanting more. This is what all art should do.
