Everything Is Illuminated (film)

Everything Is Illuminated is a 2005 American biographical comedy-drama film, written and directed by Liev Schreiber and starring Elijah Wood and Eugene Hütz. It was adapted from the novel of the same name by Jonathan Safran Foer, and was the debut film of Liev Schreiber both as a director and as a screenwriter.
Plot.
Jonathan Safran Foer (Elijah Wood), a young American Jew, goes on a quest to find the woman, Augustine, who saved his grandfather, Safran Foer, during the Holocaust in a small Ukrainian town called Trachimbrod that was wiped off the map when the Nazis liquidated Eastern European shtetls. 
His guides are a cranky, seemingly antisemitic grandfather (Boris Leskin), his wound-up Border Collie named Sammy Davis, Jr., Jr., and his enthusiastic grandson, Alex (Eugene Hütz), who constantly chatters with a unique command of English and a passion for American pop culture keep the arduous journey threaten lighter. These guides have been escorting wealthy Americans in search of their roots for decades. They are generally not very knowledgeable about the subject of finding Jews, and usually just attempt to scam them by taking them on long journeys. However, after hearing Jonathan's compelling story, they decide they actually want to help him. 
Traveling through much of rural Ukraine, they eventually find Augustine's sister, Lista (Laryssa Lauret), who tells them that Augustine was killed by Nazi soldiers after her father refused to spit on the Torah. And she leads them to the site where the town had been. 
The next night Alex's grandfather quietly kills himself. Through flashbacks, it was revealed he was Jewish and managed to survive the war himself by hiding his religion. Jonathan returns home after saying farewell to Alex, to whom he has grown close. 
Both Jonathan and Alex sprinkle soil gathered from the site of the massacre on their respective grandfathers' graves. Alex's grandfather is given a Jewish tombstone.
Music.
The score for "Everything Is Illuminated" features eight original tracks composed by Paul Cantelon, along with songs by Russian ska punk band Leningrad, Arkady Severny, Csókolom, Tin Hat Trio, and Gogol Bordello, whose lead singer Eugene Hütz plays Alex. The band members of Gogol Bordello play the band in the train station where the character Alex has come to meet his US client, Jonathan Foer. DeVotchKa's single "How It Ends" is featured in the trailer, but not in the official soundtrack.
Critical response.
"American Chronicle" counted the film among the "rare films that encapsulate the emotion of discovery and drama with humor", while "Time Out New York" called it Liev Schreiber's "unbelievably assured debut as a director". Roger Ebert praised the film, assigning it 3 and a half stars out of 4, and suggested that one might well see it a second time, as he did, "to understand the journey it takes".