Everything is Illuminated
dir. Schreiber
Opens Fri Oct 7
Fox Tower

I'm of the belief that film adaptations—be they Harriet the Spy or Lord of the Rings—should be judged on their own merits, not compared to their inspiring texts. That's largely because the clichéd line voiced by literati after viewing film adaptations (an easy "It wasn't as good as the book.") is pretty bullshitty. That said, sometimes the gap between what's on the page and what's on the screen is so large that whining is unavoidable.

Nipping at the heels of recent postmodern superstars David Foster Wallace, Bret Easton Ellis, and Dave Eggers, Jonathan Safran Foer—then only 25—published 2002's Everything is Illuminated to deafening acclaim. Based loosely on Foer's own trek to the Ukraine to research the life of his grandfather, Illuminated boasts a smart, funny narrative that's rooted in brutal history yet possesses an air of affectionate magic realism.

Actor and first-time director Liev Schreiber's adaptation stars Elijah Wood as Foer and Gogol Bordello frontman Eugene Hutz as Foer's English-challenged translator, Alex. Whimsy ensues.

Unfortunately, that's about all that ensues. In paring down Foer's broad narrative—which takes place in both a centuries-old shtetl and a modern, history-scarred Europe—Schreiber takes the tidy approach of just leaving half the book out. (It's the artier shtetl half, for those wondering.) Unfortunately, most of the book's themes and heart come from those pages; in excising the more difficult and historically tricky chunk of the book, Schreiber has made an enjoyable enough film that has all the quirks of Foer's work with none of the impact.

Throughout, he seems less like a kid searching for his family's past and more like an actor trying to shake his image as a hobbit (one can picture him sneaking off to make long-distance phone calls to a sympathetic Mark Hamill). Hutz, meanwhile, is great as the outspoken, awkward Alex, and there are some pretty pictures—Schreiber's eye is top-notch. And then there's the music—a score by Paul Cantelon that, paired with Gogol Bordello's gypsy punk, is more adept than the film at capturing Foer's synthesis of old and new. If nothing else, Schreiber's pulled together a great soundtrack—one that, along with a paperback copy of Foer's Everything is Illuminated, would make for a better evening than could be provided by Schreiber's anemic film.