The images of 9/11 are indisputably among the most indelible
and powerful of our time. They hardly need any assistance to have an emotional
impact. Indeed, when some additional effect does accompany them – a soft glow
around the edge of the frame, slow motion, dramatic music – like in Extremely
Loud and Incredibly Close, a mopey
melodrama directed by Stephen Daldry, they actually cushion the images and
dampen their impact. The harrowing, indescribable feelings of those individuals
who lived through that day are transformed into more familiar, more digestible
shades of sadness, which allow us to leave the theater feeling an undue sense
of catharsis and resolution.
Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close is a Very Serious movie about a Very Serious
subject. Oskar Schell (Thomas Horn) lost his father, Thomas Schell (Tom Hanks),
in the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001, a day young Oskar
refers to as “The Worst Day.” We see their impossibly heartwarming father-son
relationship through flashbacks and Thomas Schell is a clear frontrunner for
Father of the Year. (Oskar even refers to him as “the greatest father in the
world” late in the film.)
When he was alive, Thomas played a game with his son they
called, “Reconnaissance Expedition,” which involves Oskar searching about the
city for clues to riddles his father has created for him. In order to solve the
riddles, he must wander around Central Park, retrieving artifacts and talking
to strangers. The film’s image of New York City is an overwhelmingly and
unrealistically friendly one. (For every grumpy person that tells Oskar to kiss
off and go away, there are ten who welcome him with open arms and provide him
with a genuine life experience, a proportion I would argue is closer to its
inverse in reality, but whatever.) Even the homeless are pretty cheerful.
One such riddle, which is left unsolved at the time of his
father’s death, has Oskar looking for a mysterious sixth borough of New York.
After the Worst Day, the project is forgotten until a year later when Oskar
discovers a new clue: an envelope marked “Black” hidden inside a blue vase in
his father’s closet. Inside the envelope is a key. What does the key open? Does
the key signify a new Reconnaissance Expedition? Or is it meant to help Oskar
discover what and where the sixth borough was?
Oskar takes a shot in the dark and (correctly) assumes the
key belongs to someone with the last name Black. He sets out to talk to
everyone in New York City named Black – there are over 400 in the phone book,
never mind the unlisted ones – and ask them if they knew his father. Along the
way he meets a kind woman (Viola Davis) and her ex-husband (Jeffrey Wright),
jokes with his building’s doorman (John Goodman) and strikes up a friendship
with the mute, old man (Max von Sydow) who rents a room from his grandmother
(Zoe Caldwell). Oskar’s mother (Sandra Bullock), an emotionally vacant woman
following the Worst Day, pays disturbingly little attention to where her son
goes all day long. A last minute twist tries to paint her as Mother of the
Year, but I didn’t buy it.
Oskar is a certain breed of movie child, remarkably
insightful and poignant at all the right moments. He is the kind of child who
at times acts strikingly like an adult but then falls back on childish
emotions, usually when convenient for the plot. Newcomer Thomas Horn, a very
articulate and talented young actor, was apparently discovered on Jeopardy’s
Kids Week, which should give you an idea of the type of kid he is. In the film,
Oskar explains he was tested for Asperger’s syndrome but that the tests were
not definitive. The film is less ambiguous and portrays Oskar quite clearly as
having the disorder. He is a mathematical thinker, able to create complex
organizational systems but is also prone to emotional fits and social anxiety.
Mr. Horn’s performance is impressive and I do not doubt that
it is an accurate portrayal of Asperger’s syndrome. As the story’s protagonist
though, is Oskar maybe too precocious? I want to tread lightly here because I
do not wish to be insensitive but I wonder, does director Stephen Daldry
occasionally manipulate Oskar’s condition to increase the film’s weepy
quotient? When Oskar monologues about the chaotic nature of the world around
him, is the film using the boy’s power of articulation to further drain our
tear ducts? Would a less cogent child have the same emotional impact?
Mr. Daldry is not an untalented director and he creates a
number of lovely, small moments with his characters. The way Oskar hides under
the bed and scratches at the floor on the Worst Day. The gentle kidding of a
father who never condescends to his son. Unfortunately, he is not as adept in
working the larger mechanisms of the story. The film is too long and its pace
dwindles to a crawl in its midsection.
I was also disappointed to find that the driving forces of
the film – the riddle Oskar’s father left him, the significance of the key –
are not satisfyingly resolved and the film mostly shrugs them off as
serendipitous necessities of the plot. Of course, in a film like this, the
destination is less important than the journey. I’m not sure the journey is
much more meaningful though. The movie dispenses some vague lessons about the
beauty of life but nothing that warrants evoking the images of the smoke
billowing from the Twin Towers or the Falling Man. There is no need for us to
shy away from these images but it is imperative that we do not misuse them
either.
- Steve Avigliano, 1/30/12
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