Everything is Illuminated (DVD, 2006)

I'd like to share with you why this movie squeaked its way onto my TOP TEN LIST. Let me say it's something to get on this list for me. You don't have to be a blockbuster flick, in fact you probably aren't.

What puts you on my TOP TEN is based on this question ~ "Was I transformed simply by being engaged in this film?" I did not expect this film to offer that ~ I picked it up at Blockbuster one day when I had an open pocket of time and was deciding between reading a book and watching a flick. Saw the box, read the box, and thought okay, I'll try this. I didn't actually try it that day, things got busy and it was months later that I found it again, sitting on my "to watch" movie stack. And I passed over it three times before finally popping it into the player thinking to myself I will most likely leave the room to do something else. I didn't.

There isn't anything BIG about this movie. The acting is, well, acting. I was not completely drawn into the chararcters as they don't do much to draw you in. They simply exist and the main character's personality is so tightly wound yet at moments scarily eccentric that I couldn't get a hold on his energy at all. I was amused by the translator and the play on language differences and misunderstandings, and the music that is used to great effect, almost as if it were another actor, captured me and kept me in the moments of no dialgoue or real action.

And then, as the story unfolds (it does unfold more than develop) I started to get it ~ the smallest action, or non-action, held within it its own deep and wondrous stories. In a single glance between Grandfather and the sister of the woman who saved Jonathon's grandfather.... in the blank stares between Grandfather and the interpreter, how Sammy Davis Jr Jr acts and reacts (that's the dog).... lifetimes are lived in these moments. And in these lifetimes something happens where one life lived generations ago become intertwined with lives being lived now...

And in helping one find their ancestry, in helping one heal the wounds on their soul, you may be surprised to find that you have led yourself to heal your own in some fantastical journey of faith, fate and love. This movie transformed me. It made it to my top ten because it did transform me and because it did so sweetly, elegantly, with little transformative dialogue, with simple heartfelt actions and an amazing strength of story.