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REVIEWS


Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close REVIEWED BY BRENT SIMON


Stephen Daldry has previously made three feature films and been Oscar-nominated as Best Director for each of them, so Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close demands to be taken seriously, and certainly will be by many awards pundits and critics. An adaptation of Jonathan Safran Foer’s 2005


novel, the movie purports to filter anguish and the experience of loss through the prism of a quirky young boy. In reality, it is a preening and some- what contrived film, a tapestral effort of skilled tradecraft brought to bear on a self-serious frame- work of overt manipulations. The film unfolds in 2002, in New York City. On


what he habitually refers to as “the worst day”, Oskar Schell (Horn) lost his doting father Thomas (Hanks), who was also his best friend, in the col- lapse of the World Trade Center towers. A wildly bright, anxiety-stricken nine-year-old quite possi- bly stricken with autism or Asperger syndrome (“Tests weren’t definitive,” he says), Oskar narrates his heartache and pain in unswerving and almost omniscient fashion. With his mother Linda (Bullock), with who he


was already less close, reduced to an uncommuni- cative wreck, Oskar lives in private with his grief, having secreted away the answering-machine tape from that fateful morning which contains half a dozen increasingly frantic messages from his father. After discovering a mysterious key in his dad’s closet in an envelope marked ‘Black’, Oskar


n 14 Screen International at the Berlinale February 9, 2012 OUT OF COMPETITION


US. 2011. 128mins Director Stephen Daldry Production companies Scott Rudin Productions Domestic distribution Warner Bros Producer Scott Rudin Executive producers Celia Costas, Mark Roybal, Nora Skinner Co-producers Eli Bush, Tarik Karam Screenplay Eric Roth, based on the novel by Jonathan Safran Foer Cinematography Chris Menges Editor Claire Simpson Production designer KK Barrett Music Alexandre Desplat Main cast Tom Hanks, Sandra Bullock, Thomas Horn, Max von Sydow, Viola Davis, Jeffrey Wright, John Goodman, Zoe Caldwell


sets out on a quixotic journey through the five bor- oughs trying to ascertain the lock it fits. It is partly emotionally utilitarian — a way of


extending and keeping alive and vital his connec- tion to his dad — but Oskar also figures that by contacting every person with said surname, he can unlock the last of his father’s many elaborately constructed “special expeditions”, intellectual games in which they used to participate together. One of the first people Oskar meets is Abby


Black (Davis), who is touched by his mission. Methodically, Oskar starts to make his way down his long list, and eventually takes on a helper in the form of a mysterious, mute boarder (a wonder-


ful Max von Sydow) from the across-the-street apartment of his grandmother (Caldwell). Within the parameters of this narrative, one can


discern the faint outlines of a rich and interesting if perhaps not exactly graceful exploration of the human connection, and how despair affects us all differently. But various baroque touches (a tam- bourine Oskar uses to soothe himself ) do not translate well to screen, and the mystery at the core of Daldry’s film seems incredibly antiseptic. With effective but infrequent flashbacks show-


casing Thomas and Oskar’s connection and only a mute to provide counterbalance to Oskar’s chat- terbox soul, the movie’s stilted, formal, contrac- tion-free narration becomes overwhelming and tedious. That no-one reacts with curiosity or exas- peration at Oskar’s behaviour marks the film as a cutesy fairytale of sorts. Others may pull punches owing to the movie’s


literary pedigree, but it is difficult to locate much honest emotional connection absent the story’s September 11 trappings, and there are no grander learned truths here to merit the sort of repeat viewings that would elevate this to the canon of the year’s worthiest dramas. An acting neophyte with no formal training,


Thomas Horn at times recalls a young Elijah Wood. Verbally, he performs a feat akin to Anna Kendrick’s work as an ambitious high-school debater in 2007’s Rocket Science, rifling through information in a style necessarily designed to engulf.


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