While probing family history, director gets ‘Illuminated’

It's not uncommon for actors to begin writing and directing in order to have more control over their career. Liev Schreiber's motivation for adapting "Everything Is Illuminated" was reconnecting with his late grandfather.

Schreiber has a memory problem, he confided to an audience after a San Francisco Jewish Film Festival-sponsored preview of his directorial debut at the Embarcadero Center Cinema in late August. That's a considerable problem for an actor, but it was a bigger issue in his personal life.

After his grandfather's death in 1993, "I started to fear that I wouldn't remember him, like a lot of things in my life," Schreiber explained. Consequently, he found himself drawn to Jewish roles like the young husband in "A Walk On the Moon" and the Russian boxer in "Jakob the Liar."

"Since he died, every character I played has been sourced from him, some much closer than others," the thoughtful New York native observed during a conversation at a downtown San Francisco hotel the next day. "I think the truth is that subconsciously — and only recently has it become conscious — pretty much everything I've done since my grandfather's death has been, one way or another, motivated by his presence."

The culmination of that influence, "Everything Is Illuminated," opens Friday, Sept. 23, in the Bay Area.

Schreiber all but jumped out of his seat several years ago when he read a pre-publication excerpt of Jonathan Safran Foer's debut novel. A poignant, multilayered story of memory, selected memory and assimilation, "Everything Is Illuminated" follows a young American Jew's trip to the Ukraine to find the woman who rescued his grandfather during World War II. His colorful Ukrainian guides initially disparage their client's journey, but come to adopt it as their own.

The event that inspires the American's profoundly revelatory journey — and which resonated with Schreiber — is the death of a grandparent.

"This story was about the catharsis and self-knowing that comes with death — how mourning something can be an awakening," says Schreiber.

The star of stage and screen, who gave a chilling performance in last year's remake of "The Manchurian Candidate," looks more like a grad student than a show-biz celebrity. He favors a dark blue V-neck sweater on top of a light blue button-down shirt, finishing the monochrome ensemble with new blue jeans.

"Everything Is Illuminated" wends through the Ukrainian countryside and back in time to a grim chapter from World War II. But the persecution of the Jews was not Schreiber's central focus.

"I really don't think this film is about the Holocaust, or [that] it had ever occurred to me that it was about the Holocaust," Schreiber quietly asserts. "What it was about, and what I felt Jonathan's book was about, was the phenomenon of a young person who is invested in the history of old people. In this particular case, this guy's grandfather — and mine as well — happened to be a Ukrainian immigrant who happened to be Jewish."

That's not to say that Schreiber doesn't feel strongly about the murders of the 6 million — and the scars carried by survivors.

"Part of the tragedy of the Holocaust is the history that is lost to my generation," he declares. "Because our grandparents and great-grandparents are so aggressive about wanting to forget, we are not allowed to know huge portions of their lives. So it's not particularly the Holocaust I'm interested in, but maybe I'm interested in all the love affairs my grandfather had. But I'm not allowed to have access to those because of what he [was] forced to forget in order to survive, and to redefine himself in this new society and new culture."

While the Holocaust robbed Schreiber of experiencing some aspects of his grandfather, it contributed to a side that he still remembers well.

"That ferocity, that anger and that vitriol in him had something to do with having lost a piece of himself, and trying to embrace the world in a ridiculous and eccentric way," Schreiber concludes.

Incredibly, Schreiber acted at night in the stage revival of David Mamet's "Glengarry Glen Ross" while in post-production during the day on "Everything Is Illuminated." He has no pressing desire to direct in the near future — or ever again — unless another story grabs him as personally as Foer's did. All the headaches and hurdles were well worth it, though, for he acquired an indelible understanding of his grandfather.

"In knowing his past, I gained ownership of his spirit," Schreiber says.