Fresh
It's funny and warm, with the sting of the horrific event that triggered the trip giving it a melancholy feel.
Roger Moore, Orlando Sentinel
Everything Is Illuminated
Leave Normal Behind.
2005 · 1h 45m · PG-13
Comedy, Drama
Directed by
Liev Schreiber
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Everything Is Illuminated
Overview
A young Jewish American man endeavors—with the help of eccentric, distant relatives—to find the woman who saved his grandfather during World War II—in a Ukrainian village which was ultimately razed by the Nazis.
Director and cast
- Liev Schreiber Director
- Elijah Wood as Jonathan Safran Foer
- Eugene Hutz as Alex
- Boris Lyoskin as Grandfather
- Jana Hrabětova as Jonathan's Grandmother
- Jonathan Safran Foer as Leaf Blower
- Stephen Samudovsky as Jonathan's Grandfather Safran
- Oleksandr Choroshko as Alexander Perchov, Father
- Gil Kazimirov as Igor
- Zuzana Hodková as Alex's Mother
- Ljubomir Dezera as Young Jonathan
Critics on Rotten Tomatoes
Top critics, in their words
65%
Tomatometer
Fresh
It's profound in the way that life is profound in hindsight, its view of the past both fixed in history and mutable in the telling. And it's exquisitely tender.
Amy Biancolli, Houston Chronicle
Rotten
This isn't a frivolous film or a dumb one. Mostly, it feels like a mistake -- the wrong director matched with the wrong material.
Eleanor Ringel Gillespie, Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Fresh
[Schreiber] has managed something of a feat ... in spinning a single charming story out of Foer's yarn ball of a novel, which spanned 200 years, multiple stories and various protagonists.
Peter Howell, Toronto Star
Rotten
Schreiber effectively incorporates some of the novel's humor, most of which revolves around Alex's amusingly improvisational English, but never comes close to mining the book's true substance or heartbreak.
Connie Ogle, Miami Herald
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