Everything about Stephen Daldry’s “Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close” was constructed for the awards season. Big names? How about Oscar winners Tom Hanks and Sandra Bullock? Character idiosyncrasies? One character does not speak and another may have Asperger Syndrome. Heavy topics? The child protagonist’s father died in the World Trade Center. And yet, the movie falls just shy of such decoration, largely due to some story weaknesses.
Oskar Schell (Thomas Horn) is a pre-teen boy who lost his near-perfect father Thomas (Hanks) on “the worst day.” Thomas would create mythological stories about the missing sixth borough of New York City and devise adventures in which the socially deficient Oskar (results on Asperger were unclear) would have to interact with strangers to complete them. One day, Oskar finds a key in an envelope labeled “Black” and, wanting to believe that his father left him one last adventure, sets out to talk with everyone with the surname Black in New York City to find out what lock the key will open.
Adapted from the novel of the same name by Jonathan Safran Foer, Daldry and screenwriter Eric Roth delve into the nature of grief largely through a child’s eyes. Oskar notes that if the sun exploded, we would not know it until eight minutes later; Oskar is desperately trying to hold onto those eight minutes before the center of his universe was extinguished. So long as he has this last quest to tend to, his father lives on.
His family struggles to deal with Thomas’ death head on. His mother Linda (Bullock) fails to connect with Oskar. She can’t provide the explanation Oskar expects to why Thomas died that day. Other family members try to help Oskar deal with the pain, but he can only manage to express his feelings to the strangers he encounters while looking for the lock to his key.
Roth’s screenplay is a bit uneven. At its best, the emotional breakthroughs of the characters are pitch-perfectly relatable. The resolution surrounding Linda is powerful and effective. The scenes with the mute “Renter” (Max von Sydow), Oskar’s part-time accomplice on his journey, are charming and filled with the levity that contrasts well with the subject matter. At its worst, the story is contrived and illogical. Oskar has some insights well beyond his 9 or 10 years. The inclusion of a scene with Linda talking to Thomas in the minutes before the towers fell is incongruous given a tale told solely from Oskar’s viewpoint. The reason for the title of the movie almost certainly could not have been created by such a young boy. On the whole, though, the good outweigh the bad.
The acting is terrific as expected. Von Sydow’s physical performance, most notably his facial expressions, is impeccable. Viola Davis and Jeffrey Wright tell a whole separate tale of grief in about 5 minutes of screen time, with only about 1 minute together. And young Horn holds up well against a very experienced cast in his first film.
All in all, “Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close” is a mostly satisfying journey with interesting characters portrayed by an entertaining cast about a tough subject. You’ll definitely need your hanky on this one.
DIRECTOR: Stephen Daldry SCREENWRITER: Eric Roth CAST: Thomas Horn, Tom Hanks, Sandra Bullock, Max von Sydow, Viola Davis, Jeffrey Wright, John Goodman MPAA RATING: PG-13
