They will tell you that art has no rules, but I can think of a few. Here’s one for starters: A movie is almost always good in inverse proportion to the number of times it employs a dog- reaction shot.
“Everything Is Illuminated” is one long dog-reaction shot of a movie. So was the book, for that matter, though as a smash best seller and acclaimed debut novel, its forced eccentricity found many fans. “Everything,” movie or book, tries so hard to make me chuckle that my face freezes out of sheer obstinacy.
The eccentricities that are central to enjoying (or suffering) “Everything Is Illuminated” seem a painfully obvious collection. If there is a dog in the movie, he will be a psychotic, aggressive animal that wants to kill the refrigerator. If that dog is central to the plot, the hero of the movie must therefore hate dogs. If the hero hates dogs, naturally he will be forced to sit next to the dog in the back seat of a car, puttering across much of Eastern Europe.
If the hero also turns out to be vegetarian, guess what will be on the menu at the only restaurant in town. If the hero is also Jewish, guess which ethnic group his tour guide hates above all others? And if that anti-Semite has recently gone blind, he will be driving the car.
The problem with the movie version of “Everything Is Illuminated” is that actor-turned-director Liev Schrieber has made a faithful – if simplified – adaptation of the relentlessly eccentric book. We are handed a ridiculous group of characters and asked over and over again, through long pauses and reaction shots, to consider them touchingly crazy. Like the kids from the “American Pie” band camp, being told over and over again how much fun we’re supposed to be having isn’t illuminating. Just annoying.
In his book, Jonathan Safran Foer was either trying to give slapstick some gravitas, or hoping to give melodrama a touch of vaudeville. A young American Jew, named Jonathan Safran Foer and repressed to the point of catatonia, ventures to Eastern Europe because he is a collector. He seeks to complete his collection of family Holocaust memories with information about the mysterious woman who long ago saved his grandfather from a Ukraine firing squad.
Foer’s Ukrainian guides include the oppressively hip Alex (Eugene Hutz), he of overlapping gold chains and creased track suits, busily channeling TV’s Ali G character. The touring car also includes the dog and that cranky blind grandfather who hates Jews and insists on getting behind the wheel.
Cue the balalaika music, which won’t stop until the movie does. The vodka-and-folk-dance music, the stunningly gorgeous Ukraine countryside, the hot-blooded Ukrainian hosts, all are intended (as if you could miss it) as sharp contrasts to Foer, played by Elijah Wood in his usual stunned-hobbit mode. Wood portrays Foer as if he had just been melted from an ice block dating to the 1950s, never taking off tie or jacket, appearing dazed by every question or comment that comes his way.
The main comic conceit of the book and movie is that Alex the translator makes near-gaffes in English that turn out to be inadvertently wise commentaries on life. They are on a “rigid” search for truth, Alex says, meaning “hard,” but one look at Wood immediately makes “rigid” the better word.
In the movie, Wood’s Foer is the only one who can’t understand Alex, who but for those occasional gaffes speaks near-flawless English. Foer’s standing around looking bewildered, reminding us over and over again that this is the kind of part they keep handing to Elijah Wood, becomes distracting long before it’s endearing.
All the thought for the climactic final scene appears to have gone into growing the sunflower field where the mystery woman resides. It’s a beautiful movie shot, but not really a sensible scene; we’re so enamored of the golden sunflowers we nearly forget why we’re here, and the Holocaust memories are dusted over by a hazy pollen.
Humor can enrich the most serious of dilemmas. Far be it from me to demand the straight playing of a difficult story. But it takes the right touch, and “Everything Is Illuminated” has too much triviality and frivolous invention, and too little laudable organic amusement.
Staff writer Michael Booth can be reached at 303-820-1686 or mbooth@denverpost.com.
** | “Everything Is Illuminated”
PG-13 for profanity, subject matter, some violence|1 hour, 40 minutes|DARK COMEDY|Directed by Liev Schreiber; written by Schreiber from the book by Jonathan Safran Foer; starring Elijah Wood, Eugene Hutz and Boris |Opens today at Landmark’s Chez Artiste.
