The light of the past

One of the cooler things about being Jewish: thanks to the International Jewish Conspiracy, we have no shortage of books and movies about the Jewish experience — way out of proportion to our numbers, matter of fact. Way to go, IJC!

Add Everything is Illuminated to the list of post-Holocaust Judenangstflicken. (How’s that for some nifty on-the-spot German noun construction?) I rented it to get my fill of this guy, Eugene Hütz, front man for Gogol Bordello, and the movie does satisfy my craving for all things Hütz. He’s terrific as the smart-dancing, smooth-talking Alex Perchov, Jonathan Safran Foer’s Ukrainian translator. Pat and Kate are right: Hütz and the dog, Sammy Davis Jr. Jr., the seeing eye bitch are the best things in this film — although Grandpa Perchov has some merit, too.

What sucks, and sucks badly, is Jonathan Safran Foer’s character, played by sometimes-Hobbit Elijah Wood. Wood is an über-creepy collector. He puts everything into baggies — pebbles, notes, photos, a hapless grasshopper, his grandmother’s false teeth — and pins them to his bedroom wall. If there were a severed human finger or three up there, I wouldn’t be surprised. Indeed, I kept flashing on another Wood character, Kevin from Sin City: the same lack of affect, the same frigid stare.

I’m telling you, Jonathan is creepy. Creeeeepy. It’s hard not to feel sympathy for Grandpa and Grandson Perchov, schlepping this nebbish all across the Ukrainian outback in search of — in search of what, exactly? Jonathan has a photo, a necklace, and two names, the name of a shtetl and the name of the woman who saved his grandfather’s life when the Nazis invaded Russia.

What Jonathan doesn’t have is motivation. This business of him being a collector makes his present obsession seem little more than a demented compulsion to add another dozen baggies to his wall. We see nothing of Jonathan’s inner life, understand nothing about what makes him tick. In the end, we’re left with little sense that he is changed, other than some vague idea of connectedness to the people of the Ukraine. (Oh. He likes dogs now. Big whoop.) Is anything illuminated for Jonathan?

None of this surprises me. I don’t claim to know much about Buddhism, but I know this: enlightenment isn’t easy. And yet Jonathan’s supposed enlightenment comes after a nearly trouble-free search and no personal sacrifice.

Everything is illuminated in the light of the past, young Alex says. Thank heavens Alex narrates the movie; this identifies him as the main character. That’s a good thing, because it is Alex’s character that evolves most over the course of the film. Odd, isn’t it? The movie is based on a book of the same name by Jonathan Safran Foer. Foer even does a cameo near the beginning of the film. You’d think maybe the movie was about Foer.

Maybe I’m pissed because I dislike manipulation. The grandfather choked me up with remembrances of my own grandfather. The character made me realize how little I understood my grandfather, and how I’ll never understand him now. And how I never had a chance to say goodbye to him.

But the emotion began and ended in me. The movie was merely a prompt. Unlike The Book Thief, which touched me because I cared for the characters, Everything is Illuminated achieved its pathos through a Spielbergian plucking-of-heartstrings. As for the characters, only Eugene Hütz’s Alex felt both three-dimensional and comfortably human. Jonathan is a paper-thin neurotic. Alex’s grandfather — a character with enormous potential for drama and poignancy — exits in so baffling a manner as to undermine the entire film.

My bottom line: watch it for Hütz and Sammy Davis Jr. Jr., the seeing eye bitch. Try not to get distracted by its oversimplified take on the Holocaust. Or view it as I did, as a small, unambitious look at the subject of faith. The film says little about what it means to be Jewish in the post-Holocaust world, but it does have a few worthwhile things to say about turning one’s back on Judaism.

Here’s another plus/minus review of the movie (that’s where I stole the photo), and here’s a Salon review of the book. Hmm. I’m not sure I want to read the book, considering their recommendation is to skim half of it!

D.