[Ger-Poland-Volhynia] movie -- everything is illuminated

[Dave Obee]

There is a new movie in the theatres this week that's of interest to those of us researching in Volhynia. It's Everything is Illuminated, and is based on the book of the same name. It's about a young Jewish American who goes back to Volhynia to visit his grandfather's home town.

The town is Trachimbrod, which was northwest of Rowno and northeast of Lutzk, getting close to the Sarny region and the southern edge of the Pripyat marsh. The guy in the movie had trouble finding it. He could have saved himself some time by asking one of us.

It's a movie, so some things aren't quite right. It was filmed for the most part in the Czech republic, where there is an active move-making community, but that means the landscape shown one the screen has more hills than the real area. The Lviv train station doesn't look like the real Lviv train station. They talk about Lutzk, but don't show it. And they drive around in a Trabant, which would make more sense if they were tooling about East Germany. You're not likely to see Trabants in Volhynia; people there have Volgas, Ladas and Moskvitches, along with an ever-increasing number of vehicles from western Europe.

Beyond that, there are some historical inconsistencies. I think the pre-war anti-Semitism of the Ukrainian population is overstated, and beyond that, the fact that Trachimbrod was in Poland, not Ukraine, before the Second World War is ignored entirely. To simplify the story line, about three-quarters of the story was left out. (Other problems with the historical details in the book and movie have been listed in an article in the Prague Post, available online.)

All that said, it is still fascinating, and well worth seeing. This is a movie about someone going back to Volhynia in search of his roots, so we should be able to identify with his quest on some level.

The title is based on the phrase "everything is illuminated in the light of the past." How true.

Dave Obee