Agonizing Extremely Loud Incredibly Close to a Masterpiece
I get why director Stephen Daldry and screenwriter Eric Roth’s adaptation of Jonathan Safran Foer’s Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close has polarized critics and has left audiences in New York and Los Angeles on both sides of the love/hate divide. The movie’s singular point of view, the vessel it uses to tell its tale, the voice leading viewers onward aren’t exactly a genteel or inviting, and add that to the fact the film deals rather directly with the emotional aftermath of 9/11 and the combination isn’t immediately welcoming.
Thomas Horn in Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close © Warner Bros.
But that doesn’t mean I agree. All three of Daldry’s films have earned Best Picture and Best Director nominations. Was probably deserved for Billy Elliot; ditto in the case of The Hours (I’m not going to pass judgment on The Reader one way or the other). Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close? I think it’s the much honored filmmaker’s most daring and best effort yet, and considering just how highly most think of those aforementioned previous efforts from my standpoint that’s high praise indeed.
The story revolves around Oskar Schell (newcomer Thomas Horn), an 11-year-old New Yorker who was once tested for Asperger’s and even though the tests came back as inconclusive his forthright nature, his compulsion to say whatever it is that’s on his mind and his aversion to being touched make him difficult to be around. It’s been a year since he lost his father Thomas (Tom Hanks) on what he dubs ‘The Worst Day,’ and to say he’s still struggling trying to make sense of the loss and understand the meaning behind it is an obvious understatement.
Thomas did all he could think of to force his son to communicate with people. He’d set up scavenger hunts that would require him to interact with people he doesn’t know, quests that would put him out into the world and force him to face his fears of interpersonal relationships. So when Oskar discovers a mysterious key in his father’s belongings, a key in a small brown envelope labeled “Black,” he’s sure it is the final challenge his dad wanted him to overcome, positive the discovery of its home will help him put meaning to what seems like a meaningless death.
I admit, Oskar is not an easy kid to like. He’s forceful and direct, he has troubles dealing with his emotions. He screams some pretty horrific things at his mother Linda (Sandra Bullock) and while one wants to believe the child doesn’t mean them considering his condition I was never 100-percent certain on that point. He’s aggravating and annoying for the majority of the picture, and spending time with him is hardly a walk in the park.
But the genius of presenting us a character such as this as the protagonist is that it forced me to take stock of the actual emotionalism of the quest itself, about the way people related to both him and to the collective grief all of New York was still feeling a year after the unspeakable events that occurred on Oskar’s so-called Worst Day. I connected to it almost immediately, and as the story built, as those, like the mysterious silent renter (Max Von Sydow) living in his grandmother’s (Zoe Caldwell) apartment across the street, who came into the boy’s spectrum couldn’t help but be struck by the directness of his query, I find myself spiraling deeper and deeper into this world.
This is arguably the most direct, dynamic and multifaceted script Roth has written since The Insider, free of much of the pandering and saccharine that colored his otherwise excellent, somewhat thematically similar work on Forest Gump and The Curious Case of Benjamin Button. His ability to connect to the simplicity of the journey, to strip away the fat hit me right in the heart, making the final climactic moments even more potent and powerful than they otherwise would have been.
As for Daldry’s direction, for a story that easily could have drowned in treacle and in melodrama the lightness of his touch is somewhat astonishing. I loved his use of quiet, how he uses distance and time to let the emotion of the moment sink in fully, only utilizing Alexandre Desplat’s (The King’s Speech) exquisite score when necessary. Combined with the great Chris Menges’ (The Killing Fields) stunning cinematography, the visuals play themselves out almost as if they were a childlike dream on the verge of a nightmare, everything coming together in a captivating manner that held me spellbound.
Some will decry Horn’s performance but I think that’s unfair as he delivers exactly the sort of portrait Daldry and the story require of him. It’s the character that is at times off-putting; it is his affliction that can uncomfortably annoy. But what he’s after? What he’s offering those he comes into contact with? That is universal. That is heartfelt. For me, Horn nails these facets of Oskar, excels at making them screech to the heavens with agonizing furious beauty.
The movie builds to a point I’d rather not ruin save to say it centers on meaning between Oskar and an enigmatic businessman played by Jeffrey Wright (who is phenomenal). This is the moment where all the themes collide, where everything the movie has been talking about comes into the glorious light of day. Truth isn’t always certainty, the solution doesn’t always hold meaning, but love can be found in even the most enigmatic of corners, and what at first looks like failure can lead to reconciliation between mother and son that is nothing short of victorious.
I won’t say Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close is perfect but I will say I adored and loved it with all my being nonetheless. This is the type of film that might take a while to catch on with the masses, might need more years to marinate in the psyche before it breaks through as the instant classic I suspect it might be. For my part, I couldn’t urge people to see it with any less passion, my euphoria for Daldry’s latest virtually without end.
Film Rating: êêêê (out of 4)
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