Film-Tech Forum ARCHIVE: Everything Is Illuminated

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Posted by Steve Scott (Member # 630) on 10-10-2005, 08:40 PM:

Elijah Wood must be single-handedly saving saving the trend of EMO glasses... And thank god, because I swear I can't find any around anywhere!

There's certainly an eye on style in this film. Every gritty, lush, stark image of Ukraine is laid out here, somewhat dimy, too... a beginner's style, yet still classy move for virgin director Liev Schreiber. There's nothing really wrong with the way anything is done in this film. It's like a bizarro Bottle Rocket really, with Wood strangely playing the role of the backseat driver. His whole plight with finding the pre-war village of his grandfather takes second stage to a runaway breakout for Eugene Hutz, and a story that gets painfully deeper til the ending.

An interesting Piece to settle on for a year and figure out how to apply the kind of creativity in this adaptation to an original story.

Landmark's Edina 4
#1
Front-Surround
At least torn masking is fairly common within ten miles of Minneapolis proper

Posted by Scott Norwood (Member # 30) on 10-12-2005, 08:10 PM:

I thought it was a bit of a yawner myself. Not a "bad" film, but not one that really engaged me, either. The main character seemed to be written "wrong" somehow. I don't know how to articulate what I'm trying to say, but the individual "pieces" that make up this film just didn't "fit" right as a whole.

Posted by Jennifer Pan (Member # 2035) on 10-14-2005, 04:19 PM:

I expected more from this movie for some reason. I guess I was hoping Frodo(Elijah Wood) could really carry this movie better. Its almost like he plays the same roles or something.

Posted by Scott Norwood (Member # 30) on 10-15-2005, 03:40 PM:

Agreed with Jen. Somehow I don't think that "Frodo" was the right choice for the role.

Posted by Christian Volpi (Member # 2370) on 10-25-2005, 01:04 PM:

I dug it.

3.75/5

Posted by Stephen Furley (Member # 1277) on 10-01-2006, 02:10 PM:

Nobody has said what this story is about. It's about a young American Jew, who goes to the Ukraine in search of the woman who saved his grandfather from the nazis. There he meets his translator, a young Ukrainian who speaks only poor English but likes Michael Jackson, and his driver, the translator's grandfather, who wears dark glasses, and says he is blind

I really liked this one; we ran the trailer for two weeks, which is unusual we normally only run them the week before the film arrives. It looked interesting, so I went to see it, with two people from work.

Combining Nazi, war, lost history type events with comedy doesn't always work, but I think it does in this case.

I found that my very limited knowledge of Russian was just about enough for me to understand much of the film without having to read the subtitles. I don't really like subtitles, better than a dubbed film, but i'd much rather be able to understand what's being said directly.

Who on Earth are those weirdos (Gogol Bordello) that sing the 'Start Wearing Purple' song at the end, and also provide some of the other music in the film? I read something that described them as being like a cross between a gypsy wedding band and the Sex Pistols! The video for 'Start Wearing Purple' really is very odd. I can't find the site I downloaded it from now, but there's a, not very good, copy of it here

I've just bought the DVD, which contains several deleted scenes; in most cases I think they needed to be deleted, they really don't work.