MovieChat Forums > Everything Is Illuminated (2005) Discussion > Marred by the film's final events (Spoil...

Marred by the film's final events (Spoilers)

posted 10 years ago by PotassiumMan
3 replies | jump to latest

The grandfather's suicide was shocking and inexplicable and what made matters worse was that the film tried to conveniently paper it over, by offering a bewildered post-mortem as a disclaimer after the fact. I felt like the film was trying to *beep* with me. I was insulted, quite frankly. If you're going to have a radical change in a storyline take place, you better offer a satisfactory explanation. Because not everyone in the audience is as dumb as dirt. In this particular case, the plot's deviation was all the more heartbreaking because the film was flirting with greatness up to that point. It's just a shame.

[–] Jes' Sayin' (5984) 7 years ago

Wasn't it obvious? He had done very bad things, even to Jews, his own people, and after years of trying to distance himself from the fact, this trip brought it all home and knocked him absolutely flat with sorrow, regret and horror.

[–] chilone (17296) 5 years ago

Yep. I loved the ending.

[–] angelosdaughter (158) 3 years ago

Me, too.
But I think the old man committed suicide because returning to the site of the village, and seeing Lista, the only other living villager, the old woman, who had been the girl that witnessed him, miraculously survived from the massacre, throwing his jacket with the yellow star identifying him as a Jew back into the pit, and walking away from his Jewish self, was at last able to reclaim his identity. She remenbered him, and his penchant for carrying around books that he loved to think about, but could not read. She gave him back himself. The suicide was his way of rejoining his compatriots. He had spent his whole life hating Jews, denying his identity. As Alex says, the expression on his grandfather's dead face was that of a man content to be where he was, that is, back with his own kind. The headstone on the memorial to the village restores to the grandfather his Jewish name.
I loved this movie, and especially Lista, who preserved the village of Trachimbrod through the mementos of the slain that she gathered and preserved for 'those who might come searching."