Jan. 25, 2012 - Issue #849: Blind Date

Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close

Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close (adapted from Jonathan Safran Foer's novel) is this year's Exhibit A frontrunner for books becoming badly literalized on screen. On the page, well-written prose can make the voice of an autistic boy, on a Quixotic odyssey through NYC to deal with his father's 9/11 death, not just endurable but insightful. In this movie, the POV of Oskar Schell (Thomas Horn), trying to unlock the mystery of a key found among his dad's belongings, becomes irritatingly self-involved and self-tormenting. It doesn't help that Oskar's dad (Tom Hanks) remains a near-saint, or that one of the movie's soul-singing revelations is that of patient, all-knowing maternal love (personified here by Sandra Bullock). The only non-cliché is an intriguing point, undeveloped—out here, so many of us have been autism-ized (overwhelmed) by grief or loss.


The movie's organization seems the problem—frequent circling-back to the towers' collapse seems almost sadistic so long as the reason for Oskar's seemingly selfish coverup of a memento mori is delayed. There's a game-playing with grief here, indulging in Oskar's quest, until the movie finally has it both ways—noting Oskar's denial but still solving a puzzle-message from dad to him. Whenever true feeling (a viciously frank fight between Oskar and his mom) and thoughtful adults (played by Max von Sydow and Jeffrey Wright) appear, it's a relief from the movie's roving, Lord-of-the-Wrings-Emotions quest. In honour of Oskar's honesty, call this one Painfully Well-Intentioned and Artfully Cloying. vueweekly.com comments: powered by Disqus