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While many may know of actor Liev Schreiber from the original Scream and the remakes of The Omen and The Manchurian Candidate, in Everything Is Illuminated, an independent film he adapted from the novel by Jonathan Safran Foer and directed in 2005, he crafts a remarkable blend of off-beat comedy, road adventure of discovery and a bittersweet historical tale.

Elijah Wood plays Jonathan Safran Foer, an eccentric Jewish-American who travels to the Ukraine to find a woman who saved his grandfather from the Nazis when many in his village were killed in 1942. Jonathan is an avid collector of all sorts of trivial and personal historical objects, and all he has is a faded photo of his grandfather standing in a field with a beautiful young woman.

Seeking the help of an elderly tour guide who speaks no English and who claims to be blind, the man’s goofy 20-something grandson/translator, Alex, and the old man’s seeing eye dog, named Sammy Davis Jr. Jr.(the old man’s favorite singer), Jonathan begins his journey of self discovery that ends in a village of Trachimbrod with surprising revelations.

Wood is stoically effective as the straight-laced, nerdy fish out of water as he reacts with the locals of the former Soviet Republic. Eugene Hutz is a riot as Alex, the simple villager who is in love with U.S. pop culture and dance, especially Michael Jackson. With his broken English translating and voice-over narration, he sets the perfect comic tone for the film’s lighter parts.

But before you laugh too hard, the film turns toward a uniquely emotional climax that makes this moving hidden gem one not to miss. Its simple message is, “Everything becomes illuminated in the light of the past.”