This week I'm teaching, in my 100-level Good Books class, Jonathan Safran Foer's Everything is Illuminated. It's a funny and moving book, too clever by half, and gets a bit on the messy side toward the end where it should smooth out, but the metafictional elements are fun and the Alex character is so excellent, I would dispense much currency just to read about him. I gave a reading quiz on the book yesterday, though, and get the feeling that my students are finding it tough going.
When I can, I like to show the movie that's been made of the book, not just to break up the days (although it does do that) but because the students usually find it easier to talk about movies than books, and so the movie offers an opening into the book for a lot of kids. Yesterday I showed the second half of the movie to class and watched it with them for the first time.
But the movie version of Everything is Illuminated bears so little resemblance to the book that this time I wonder if it's doing more harm than good. [SPOILER ALERT] My beef isn't really that the fun metafictional elements are now missing, or that Jonathan is turned into a kind of zombie as played by Elijah Wood, or that the story completely excised the novel Jonathan came to Ukraine to write, or that Alex's grandfather turned out to be a Jew who miraculously survived being shot by a Nazi death squad instead of a man tortured by the guilt of turning his best friend in as a Jew, or that Liev Schreiber turned Lista into Augustine's sister. All novels that are made into movies necessitate changes, and the source material here is extremely dense and complex and would require some things be cut and/or changed.
No--my problem is that in the movie version, Grandfather's suicide MAKES NO EFFING SENSE! Why would he kill himself after surviving everything he did? When his grandson learns the truth about his grandfather being a Jew, THEN he slits his wrists in the bathtub? WTF? In the book, he is wracked by guilt not only for what he did to his friend but how he raised his child, and how that child is raising his child. Once Alex takes over as the guardian of the family, Grandfather finds some peace.
The movie does not illuminate this part of the story. Period.
I did find, because I was dying of curiosity about how the movie came to be so different, this interview at Rotten Tomatoes with Jonathan Safran Foer and Liev Schreiber. But I still don't get it. Why leave that part in if they were going to change everything else?
I've seen the movie, but haven't read the book. I agree, the movie ending made no sense at all.
Posted by: churlita | October 03, 2007 at 09:29 AM
This is why I don't show movies to students in my lit classes.
Posted by: Wayne Barr | October 03, 2007 at 09:42 AM