Review of Everything Is Illuminated (2005) by Mariana L — 29 Jan 2010

A Holocaust movie that is more interested in finding its way past that tragedy -- without, by an means, forgetting it -- than reminding us of its horror.

Schreiber's debut behind the camera is astonishing and, well, illuminating. His images and sequences are so emotive and engaging they are nearly palpable, like getting up so close to a painting that you see the paint as much as the picture itself. He ties his fresh images together in a seamless arc from the humorous to the sublime to the poignant and finally leading us to the illuminating.

The cast is without flaw. While having a huge imbalance in terms of star power, with Wood being by far the biggest name, the rest of the cast and Schreiber's direction keeps everything keenly balanced and perpetually enjoyable. It's the happy occasion of no one standing out because EVERYone stands out.

Whether it works as an adaptation or not I cannot say, since I haven't read the book, though some have rated it condescendingly in that regard. Perhaps it doesn't reach the immense, devastating depths of the text, but it's hard to imagine that what Schreiber gives us and how expertly he and his cast and crew deliver it isn't giving us something uniquely worthy.

If the film suffers only by comparison to its source material, the disappointment is superficial. This isn't like Coppola's adaptation of Dracula, which essentially ravages the original, desecrating it.

If Schreiber's "Illuminated" is less focused on the tragedy of the Holocaust, it is only in a desire to focus more on how its sufferers -- indeed, the human race -- can not only survive, not only heal, but, fittingly, embody that hopeful promise from the book of Genesis: "But as for you, ye thought evil against me; but God meant it unto good, to bring to pass, as it is this day, to save much people alive.".