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Venezia 5 Settembre 2005 - Multimedia - Articoli
INTERVIEW - Wood swaps "Lord of Rings" for Ukrainian road movie
"Lord of the Rings" star Elijah Wood has left his elfin persona behind with quirky "Everything is Illuminated", the story of an American Jew travelling through Ukraine to find the woman who saved his grandfather's life.
Adapted from Jonathan Safran Foer's critically acclaimed novel, the off-beat film bundles the fictional Foer into a battered sky blue Trabant with an inept translator, a blind driver and a rabid dog -- Sammy Davis Jr. Jr.
The film, which traces their trip from Odessa to the shtetl razed by Nazi troops, is a directorial debut for actor Liev Schreiber and has been well-received at the Venice Film Festival, where it is screening in the "Horizons" section.
"At the base, it's about a man from America who doesn't quite fit in, with the comedy that entails. Everyone can relate to that, when things are lost in translation," Wood told Reuters at one of the beach resorts lining the sun-soaked Venice Lido.
"I loved the story, the comedy and how emotional it becomes. It was also an opportunity to do something different to what I had done before."
Since his first * "Lord of the Rings" picture, Wood has had roles in a handful of small films, with bigger productions including the acclaimed "Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind" and the graphic novel adaptation "Sin City".
"It's nice to be given the chance to play different roles, to have people perceive you in a different light," he said.
Wood portrays Foer as a nerdy, bespectacled vegetarian with a comic tendency to patronise the locals, little ability to understand the mangled English of his translator, Alex, and a phobia of the snarling Sammy Davis Jr. Jr.
Ukrainian-born musician Eugene Hutz plays the shell-suited, gold-toothed Alex whose self-declared passion is "disseminating currency" in Odessa night clubs.
The poignant character of the gruff, jazz-loving driver and grandfather -- who named the dog after his favourite artist -- is played by Russian actor Boris Leskin.
"My model of casting comes from Eastern Europe and part of the ideology there is that culture and place are essential," Schreiber told Reuters.
"When you have this structure of a stranger in a strange land, it is essential that the place and characters be really authentic.".
Hutz said he felt he was made for the role of lanky, hip hop-obsessed Alex, who cannot understand why anyone would come from the United States to holiday in Ukraine.
Filmed mostly in the Czech Republic, "Everything is Illuminated" uses an eclectic mix of Eastern European music and hand-picked bit-part actors to convey the quirky atmosphere of Foer's original book.
Schreiber, whose best known roles include Jonathan Demme's 2004 film "The Manchurian Candidate" and "Scream", said he first stumbled on the novel when he was began working on a similar tale after his own Ukrainian grandfather died in 1993.
"I read the whole thing and realised I had stumbled onto something remarkable," said Schreiber, who describes his film as an "amusement park ride". "It was perfect."
Reuters - by Clara Ferreira-Marques - Sep 6, 2005 11:56 PM IST
* Note from EWI: The Lord of the Rings is not the first film
where Elijah Wood played a character, neither it is his first that has been successful.
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