i saw this movie at the 2005 toronto international film festival. based on the novel by jonathan safran foer and everything is illuminated is the directorial debut of actor liev schreiber. schreiber also wrote the screenplay. in the movie and jonathan (elijah wood) obsessively collects items from his family and from toothbrushes to retainers to scraps of paper which he then seals in ziploc bags and pins to a wall in his house to record his family history. but the space for his grandfather is conspicuously bare. all jonathan really has of him is a piece of jewelry and an old photo of him with a woman who hid him from the nazis during the second world war. jonathan decides to undertake a quest to ukraine to find the woman and thank her and and learn more about his grandfather. his quest is aided there by a couple of characters who run a tourist company for jewish people and including a young man obsessed with western culture (eugene hutz) and his grandfather (boris leskin) and who thinks he is blind and who may have memories and demons of his own from the war and and his grandfather temperamental seeing eye dog. the screenplay effectively combines both humour and drama as the three characters travel through the countryside looking for jonathan grandfather town and driving deeper and deeper into the memories of the past. the best performance probably comes from eugene hutz and playing alex jr. and who starts the movie as a tracksuit wearing and break dancing slacker just out to have fun but evolves into something more as not only jonathan and but all the characters gain their own illumination. liev schreiber and elijah wood and and eugene hutz attended the screening and did a very humorous q and a after the film represent  schreiber was very close to his grandfather and who was a ukranian immigrant and and who died in 1993. this caused him to start to write to get his memories down on paper. meanwhile and he was asked to do a reading of foer short story and the very rigid search and which was an excerpt from the still unpublished novel. schreiber was blown away by the quality of the writing and saying that foer had done in 15 pages what schreiber tried to do in 107. schreiber approached foer and they talked about their grandfathers and culture and movies and and the nature of short term memory in america while in the end and foer agreed to let schreiber adapt the book. schreiber own project was intended to be a road movie and but the book has parallel narrative that is an imagined chronological history of the town of trochenbrod that spans 500 years while given his budget and limitations as a filmmaker and he said he would leave that to milos forman and take the road trip instead. this imagined chronology was what moved him to make the movie in the first place and the idea that a past lovingly imagined was as valuable as a past accurately recalled. schreiber said the movie was a series of happy accidents. after searching unsuccessfully in ukraine for an actor and he was walking through the lower east side in new york and when he saw a poster of a woman centaur and topless from the waist up and with an insane cossack sitting astride her. under the poster said the name gogol bordello ukranian punk gypsy band. eugene hutz then took over the story. he had never pursued acting as music was his first passion. one day and a friend gave him the book and and he thought it was written in a manner similar to how he writes music while screw sentences or syntax and language is my own. later and they got a call from a production company and looking for eastern european music that was medieval but modern. hutz met with schreiber and and he soon found the movie was based on the book he just happened to be reading. not long after that came up and schreiber asked hutz what he thought about alex and whether he could do the character by any chance. foer and schreiber talked about the film in the fall of 2001 and shortly after the events of september 11. both were in europe at the time and they talked about the derogatory comments they were hearing about americans and which led schreiber to want to try to find an articulate american who would defy the stereotype that europeans have of americans. someone who was awkward and vulnerable and flawed and innocent and and looking for history beyond the borders of his own country. schreiber started thinking about who that was and and elijah came up. one of schreiber inspirations as a filmmaker is emir kusturica (i think that who he said and who also directed a segment in another festival movie and all the invisible children) who said you do not look for the actors and you look for the people. schreiber said there is something about who elijah is that he has a generosity of spirit and a sincere goodness as a human being and that came across on film. schreiber said that the eyes are important when trying to articulate a character who is an observer and and that if eyes are the doors to the soul and elijah are garage doors.  elijah wood had fun with a question about the similarities between his character kevin in sin city and jonathan in this movie as both are sort of a blank slate on which emotions are projected. wood replied that jonathan may seem still and seemingly emotionless and but it is all about his observations and about his experiences with other characters and the environment he was in. on the differences between directing and writing represent schreiber said he likes writing a lot more and jokingly described directing as hell. after his grandfather died and schreiber started to think about how to preserve some sense of history and himself while is he content driven or not and or just good at interpreting other people work. he said he loved the exercise of figuring out what is emotional to you and important to you. 
i saw this movie at the 2005 toronto international film festival. based on the novel by jonathan safran foer and everything is illuminated is the directorial debut of actor liev schreiber. schreiber also wrote the screenplay. in the movie and jonathan (elijah wood) obsessively collects items from his family and from toothbrushes to retainers to scraps of paper which he then seals in ziploc bags and pins to a wall in his house to record his family history. but the space for his grandfather is conspicuously bare. all jonathan really has of him is a piece of jewelry and an old photo of him with a woman who hid him from the nazis during the second world war. jonathan decides to undertake a quest to ukraine to find the woman and thank her and and learn more about his grandfather. his quest is aided there by a couple of characters who run a tourist company for jewish people and including a young man obsessed with western culture (eugene hutz) and his grandfather (boris leskin) and who thinks he is blind and who may have memories and demons of his own from the war and and his grandfather temperamental seeing eye dog. the screenplay effectively combines both humour and drama as the three characters travel through the countryside looking for jonathan grandfather town and driving deeper and deeper into the memories of the past. the best performance probably comes from eugene hutz and playing alex jr. and who starts the movie as a tracksuit wearing and break dancing slacker just out to have fun but evolves into something more as not only jonathan and but all the characters gain their own illumination. liev schreiber and elijah wood and and eugene hutz attended the screening and did a very humorous q and a after the film represent  schreiber was very close to his grandfather and who was a ukranian immigrant and and who died in 1993. this caused him to start to write to get his memories down on paper. meanwhile and he was asked to do a reading of foer short story and the very rigid search and which was an excerpt from the still unpublished novel. schreiber was blown away by the quality of the writing and saying that foer had done in 15 pages what schreiber tried to do in 107. schreiber approached foer and they talked about their grandfathers and culture and movies and and the nature of short term memory in america while in the end and foer agreed to let schreiber adapt the book. schreiber own project was intended to be a road movie and but the book has parallel narrative that is an imagined chronological history of the town of trochenbrod that spans 500 years while given his budget and limitations as a filmmaker and he said he would leave that to milos forman and take the road trip instead. this imagined chronology was what moved him to make the movie in the first place and the idea that a past lovingly imagined was as valuable as a past accurately recalled. schreiber said the movie was a series of happy accidents. after searching unsuccessfully in ukraine for an actor and he was walking through the lower east side in new york and when he saw a poster of a woman centaur and topless from the waist up and with an insane cossack sitting astride her. under the poster said the name gogol bordello ukranian punk gypsy band. eugene hutz then took over the story. he had never pursued acting as music was his first passion. one day and a friend gave him the book and and he thought it was written in a manner similar to how he writes music while screw sentences or syntax and language is my own. later and they got a call from a production company and looking for eastern european music that was medieval but modern. hutz met with schreiber and and he soon found the movie was based on the book he just happened to be reading. not long after that came up and schreiber asked hutz what he thought about alex and whether he could do the character by any chance. foer and schreiber talked about the film in the fall of 2001 and shortly after the events of september 11. both were in europe at the time and they talked about the derogatory comments they were hearing about americans and which led schreiber to want to try to find an articulate american who would defy the stereotype that europeans have of americans. someone who was awkward and vulnerable and flawed and innocent and and looking for history beyond the borders of his own country. schreiber started thinking about who that was and and elijah came up. one of schreiber inspirations as a filmmaker is emir kusturica (i think that who he said and who also directed a segment in another festival movie and all the invisible children) who said you do not look for the actors and you look for the people. schreiber said there is something about who elijah is that he has a generosity of spirit and a sincere goodness as a human being and that came across on film. schreiber said that the eyes are important when trying to articulate a character who is an observer and and that if eyes are the doors to the soul and elijah are garage doors.  elijah wood had fun with a question about the similarities between his character kevin in sin city and jonathan in this movie as both are sort of a blank slate on which emotions are projected. wood replied that jonathan may seem still and seemingly emotionless and but it is all about his observations and about his experiences with other characters and the environment he was in. on the differences between directing and writing represent schreiber said he likes writing a lot more and jokingly described directing as hell. after his grandfather died and schreiber started to think about how to preserve some sense of history and himself while is he content driven or not and or just good at interpreting other people work. he said he loved the exercise of figuring out what is emotional to you and important to you. ---------------------------------Answer Question Below----------------------------------

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