“Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close” (2011): A One-Minute Film Review

There is an old adage that tells us that a recipe can only be as good as the ingredients that are used.  If that is true, consider the Oscar-nominated Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close. It begins with director Stephen Daldry, a man so narratively gifted that all three of his previous films have gone on to earn “Best Picture” nominations.  To that, you add the two-time, Academy Award-winning actor, Tom Hanks, in the role of a saintly father who may be the only person on earth who understands his uniquely challenged son.  Now mix in Sandra Bullock, just two years removed from her own Oscar-winning performance, as a bereaved mother left to deal with her own grief, even as she struggles to help her son come to grips with his loss.  Finally, take all these ingredients and set them in the context of the “jumpers” leaping from the burning towers on September 11^th.  What should emerge from the oven is a scintillating film that finally gives voice to our collective grief and rage.  But, unfortunately, this is not the case.  Indeed, there are two critical weaknesses that take the legs right out from underneath this film and ultimately prevent it from becoming anything more than an overly-saccharine sympathy card that leaves nothing but a bad aftertaste in your mouth.

So what are the issues?  Well, the first problem has to do with the adaptation of the source material itself.  In fairness to Eric Roth, anytime a screenwriter has to distill the content of a novel down to a script that can be filmed in two hours, material is going to be sacrificed.  But in this case, many of Jonathan Safran Foer’s most insightful musings on the nature of war and terror have been left on the editing room floor.  In the novel, the only reason the grandfather re-emerges into the life of this scarred young boy is because he, too, knows what it means to lose a parent to the ever-turning gears of war.  But here, in the film, the fire-bombings of Dresden during World War II are used only as a set up to explain the grandfather’s selectively mute nature.  Thus, the larger theme of war and its impact on the lives of the innocent is almost completely absent.  And that is a very real problem when you are attempting to say something of value on the subject of 9/11. If you do ultimately decide to see this film, ask yourself this: how would the film have been substantially changed if Oskar’s father did not die in the attacks of 9/11, but in a random car accident that left him with just enough time to place a few phone calls?  If you believe, as I do, that nothing would have functionally changed, than you will begin to see the central problem with the film.  To reduce the events of September 11^th to nothing more than a plot device that allows a character to grow is to fundamentally disrespect the nearly 3000 people that lost their lives on that day in history.

The second major issue with this film has to do with the casting of young Thomas Horn.  For some inexplicable reason, director Stephen Daldry made the decision to cast a complete unknown in the role of Oskar Schell.  Prior to this film, Horn had never acted either in film or in television; and that is a massive liability for a film in which the young actor is required to play an emotionally shattered boy who is likely suffering from the effects of Asperger’s Syndrome as well as Post Traumatic Stress Disorder.  Yes, every once in a while, a Haley Joel Osment in The Sixth Sense comes along to take us all by surprise.  But that is the exception and not the rule.

So where does Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close sit in the pantheon of 9/11 films?  Probably somewhere beneath Oliver Stone’s World Trade Center, and just above Adam Sandler’s Reign Over Me.  At best, it’s an adequate film that leaves the viewer wondering: is it just too soon to expect a film to really be able to handle the events of that day? 

This film has been rated PG-13 by the MPAA for emotional thematic material, some disturbing images, and language.

 

Capturing 9/11 on Film

Last night, my wife and I decided to take in Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close, one of the nine films nominated for the “Best Picture” of 2012.  Ordinarily, after viewing a film of this nature, I would simply put up a “One-Minute Review,” and be done with it.  But something about this film has elicited responses within me that demand more than a few perfunctory paragraphs. So today, I am going to begin a brief series on the subject of 9/11 and film.  And to get things rolling, I am simply going to highlight a few major films that have attempted to address this subject over the past 10 years.

United 93 (2006).

On the fifth anniversary of the terrorist attacks, Paul Greengrass, director of The Bourne Supremacy and The Bourne Ultimatum, offered us this partly speculative, real-time account of the only hijacked plane that failed to strike its intended target.  Much to his credit, Greengrass wisely rejected any attempt to entertain the audience and largely avoided almost all of the exploitative melodrama that one would normally expect from a picture of this nature.  In fact, he was so resistant to the notion of fictionalizing or sentimentalizing the events of 9/11 that he even saw fit to cast some of the real flight controllers as themselves in the film.  Without question, this is the rawest of the films released to date, as it offers no hope and no explanation.

September 11 (2002).

Released within one year of the tragic events of 9/11, this ambitious, yet rarely-seen, film is actually a compilation of eleven “shorts,” filmed by directors such as: Mira Nair, Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu and Sean Penn.  With each segment lasting exactly 11 minutes, 9 seconds and 1 frame, the filmmakers were given broad latitude to explore how the events of the titular day affected people all around the world.  As with any film of this nature, some segments are stronger than others.  Having said that, this film deserves to be seen, if for no other reason than it was the first of its kind to tackle the issue while the wounds were still raw and bleeding.

World Trade Center (2006).

Released around the same time as United 93, this film could not be more different in tone or effect.  Subverting his usual flair for political muckraking, director Oliver Stone instead elected to film a patriotic story of two Port Authority rescue workers who were trapped when the Twin Towers collapsed, and were amongst the last of the survivors to be extracted from “Ground Zero.”  While the film’s tagline sees fit to remind us that this is “a true story of courage and survival,” one can’t help but wonder if we are being reminded of this fact because the sense of hope that the film conveys feels so out of place with everything that the viewer knows to be true about the events of that day.

Zero Dark Thirty (2012).

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Reign Over Me (2007).

Six years after the attacks of 9/11, Adam Sandler commendably used his clout to make the first mainstream, Hollywood movie about the emotional fallout that followed the events of that day.  Unfortunately, Sandler’s best intentions were seriously undermined by his own desire to stretch himself as a dramatic actor.  The resultant film is a melodramatic mess that only sporadically comes to life when the under-rated, but always-excellent Don Cheadle enters the frame to provide some measure of gravitas and genuine humanity.  Sadly, by the end, we are left with a vision of “hope” that feels almost as patently false as much of Sandler’s acting career.

Part 2 of this series will explore a few of the most significant documentaries on the subject of 9/11, while part 3 will conclude by placing Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close within the proper context of our culture’s attempts to capture this event on film.