Review of Everything Is Illuminated (2005) by Troy K — 21 Apr 2013
Everything Is Illuminated begins as an ethnic fish out of water comedy and ends with reflections and memory. It stars Elijah Wood as Jonathan he's a collector who collects family things. He is given a photograph by his grandmother which has his grandfather with another woman.
The woman is named Augustine and she saved Jonathan's grandfather's life during World War II. So Jonathan flies to the Ukraine to find this woman and find out more about how she saved his grandfather's life.
With the help of a goofy tour guide named Alex played by Eugene Hutz. Alex's grandfather who is a driver who claims he's blind is played by Boris Leskin who has a seeing eye dog who grows to love Jonathan.
The journey starts out funny but then halfway through the grandfather decides to take a short cut and then the journey becomes enlightened and well like the title suggests Everything Is Illuminated which all the secrets are out.
This movie is really well done. The movie begins as a comedy and it's good that it does to get us ready for the dark places it goes in the later half of the movie. The movie begins goofy, gets dark and when it ends we are unexpectedly touched by the events we've just seen.
This is a touching movie with great performances and a great script.
This review of Everything Is Illuminated (2005) was written by Troy K on 21 Apr 2013.
Everything Is Illuminated has generally received positive reviews.
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