Jonathan Safran Foer collects things related to his family. He decides to travel to the Ukraine to investigate a curious item of his late Grandfather’s bequeathed to him by his Grandmother on her deathbed. On his trip he is guided by a young Ukranian translator named Alex and Alex’s grandfather. Together they come to realize the power and value of memory and heritage, each in their own way. Based on a novel of the same title.
The concept sounded interesting and the trailers made it look visually complex, but unfortunately this movie could not deliver on the promises it made.
For one thing, Elijah Wood (who plays lead character Jonathan) wears improbably extreme eye-magnifying glasses which have the undesirable effect of conjuring up another one of his characters, the cannibalistic freakshow named Kevin from Sin City, released the same year. Unfortunate for everyone involved.
Another misstep is that Alex the Ukranian translator/guide narrates the tale with what was intended to be comically bad English. For me the joke wore off about two minutes into the movie. I can only hear someone who is basically a strawman for contemporary Eurotrashy post-Soviet stereotypes refer to a dog as a “seeing eye bitch” maybe once before I stop thinking it is in any way amusing.
Issues of taste and associations set aside, probably the biggest issue with this movie was that it was trying very hard to be creative, but did not really succeed. It was actually a pretty standard narrative about the importance of remembering the Holocaust, and performed all the usual ruminations on the roots of prejudice and hatred. Just adding quirky and obnoxious characters into the mix along with pastoral scenery didn’t really provide a new perspective on how we may, generations after the fact, go about remembering the atrocities committed by the Nazis or figure out how they impact our own lives.
At its best it was vaguely amusing for a few seconds, but at its worst it was irritating and pointless. Just skip it.
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