| 'EVERYTHING' / HUTZ : Liev Schreiber's 'Everything Is Illuminated' [5/10] |
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| Wednesday, 14 December 2005 | |
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It's only a few years since Schreiber played a young Orson Welles in RKO 281, a rather good little TV movie which explored the making of Citizen Kane. So we perhaps shouldn't be surprised that for Schreiber's own directorial debut he's aimed very high indeed - only to (predictably) fall some way short of his over-ambitious target. The script is by Schreiber himself, and doesn't attempt to hide the literary origin: the film is divided into chapters and from time to time we see Alex (Eugene Hutz) "writing" the book, although Foer's novel alternated narrators between Alex and the 'Jonathan' character. Admirers of the novel reckon Schreiber has thus only really filmed half of the story - though even audiences totally unfamiliar with the text may feel that there's something half-baked and unsatisfying about the film, despite the many incidental pleasures which it delivers. Prime among these is the charismatic Hutz, making what is effectively his movie debut as the talkative, genial, irrepressible Alex - and revelling in the character's idiosyncratic form of English. He's terrific company, and because Foer (Elijah Wood) is such a tamped-down, recessive presence, Alex dominates nearly every scene in which he features. This gives Everything Is Illuminated a lolloping, engaging air which sustains it for more than half its length. The second half, however, sees the story take much more serious turns as Alex and Jonathan near the solution to their quest. Alex's grandfather, also named Alex (Boris Leskin), moves centre-stage having previously been sidelined as quirky comic relief - alongside with his (film-stealingly) intelligent dog Sammy Davis Jr, Jr. As we delve into Alex's painful memories, plot holes start yawning open all over the place - to the extent that we wonder whether we're supposed to take the whole thing as a fable-like example of anything-goes magical realism. The trouble is, the events in Alex's past - and those of Jonathan's family - are very real, very painful, and revolve around Nazi atrocities. Foer and Schreiber don't manage to integrate the stunningly serious subject-matter within their jokey framework - giving the project a slightly exploitative air, as if the Nazi stuff was being used to provide sentimental gravitas: cheaply bought, ostentatiously worn. The horrors we glimpse in flashback are, like everything else, filtered through Matthew Libatique's alluring cinematography: all saturated tones and striking colours. Scene after scene seems set up and filmed not to advance the story, but to dazzle the audience with in-yer-face beauty: 'everything is aestheticised' would be a more apt title than the somewhat pretentious and enigmatic one chosen by Foer. From the evidence on screen, meanwhile, the numerous inconsistencies and gaps in the narrative are down to Schreiber's adaptation rather than Foer's source material - and Foer certainly can't be blamed for Schreiber's baffling decision (presumably economic) to shoot Everything Is Illuminated in the Czech Republic rather than Ukraine. Dozens of Hollywood movies are made in or around Prague these days, and in the vast majority of cases (Doom, most recently) it doesn't matter a jot. But if ever a film should be made in the country where it's supposed to be set, then it's Everything Is Illuminated, which is full of characters extolling the virtues of the wonderful countryside, and where the soil of one's ancestors is of crucial importance. If Zhang Yimou can film sections of House of Flying Daggers in this country, Schreiber should surely have done the same. Ukrainian audiences will surely be up in arms - and they likely won't appreciate what is a rather caricatured version of their countrymen (surly workmen; grim-faced outsize waitresses, etc). Schreiber and Foer would probably defend themselves by saying that, while Alex and his family represent how Americans prejudicially see Ukrainians, the oddball Jonathan character is how Ukrainians 'see' Americans - but these are very handy get-outs for both author and director, and while 'Ukrainians' (mostly played by Czechs?) abound, the only Yank on view is Jonathan. And the film-makers themselves are guilty of an even more blinkered 'dumb American' perspective, as they clearly reckon one eastern European ex-Communist state looks pretty much like another. As Alex might put it, "Why do you do this?" Neil Young 14th December, 2005 EVERYTHING IS ILLUMINATED : [5/10] : USA (US/Cz) 2005 : Liev SCHREIBER : 106 mins seen at the Cornerhouse cinema, Manchester (UK), 10th December 2005 - public show |
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