text: When I first saw this movie, I had thought that it was going to be a terrible upset, being directed by first-time director Liev Schrieber. What I saw in the next 130 minutes completely and utterly changed my mind. Based on the novel by Jonathan Safran Foer, Everything is Illuminated tells the story of a young Jewish-American collector(masterfully played by Elijah Wood)who is trying to find the woman who saved his grandfather from the Nazis in WWII. He travels to Germany and enlists in the help of a 20-something, club hitting translator and his grandfather. This results in a rigid search across the country, and they are determined to find what they are looking for. Shot in some of the most beautiful countryside in the world, Everything Is Illuminated delivers tension between the translator and his grandfather, and of the help that Jonathan needs to find his quarry. There is much religious matter as well, as the grandfather refers to Jonathan as "The Jew." All in all, This is a movie that deals with finding yourself and loving family. I give this wonderful, if not illuminated movie, a 10 out of 10.-Arjun