Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close
I’m going to make an early call that this film will win Best Picture. And possibly Thomas Horn for Lead Actor for his performance as Oskar Schell.
Here’s the plot, in a nutshell: nine-year-old Oskar, who falls somewhere on the autism spectrum, recently lost his father (Tom Hanks) in the Twin Towers on 9/11. When he discovers a mysterious key in his father’s closet in an envelope labeled “Black,” Oskar decides to visit everyone in New York City with that surname until he discovers what the key unlocks. What follows is Oskar’s journey through his grief, and a love letter to NYC and its boroughs.
I just got back from a screening of this film, followed by a Q&A with acclaimed director Stephen Daldry (he has previously directed only three feature-length films - The Hours, Billy Elliot, The Reader - and has received Oscar nominations for every single one; expect Extremely Loud to be his fourth). Daldry revealed that they were shooting footage as recently as NINE days ago, and we were one of the first audiences to see the finished film.
For anyone familiar with the novel of the same name, this film quite successfully captures its spirit, albeit in a very different way. The book is one of the most unique pieces of storytelling I’ve ever read: there are lots of pictures, shifting perspectives, and jumps in time. Author Jonathan Safran Foer conjures a very unorthodox style of writing and it is nothing short of spectacular. The movie reaches equal heights.
This is the second book-to-film adaptation I’ve seen in the past two days (Girl with the Dragon Tattoo being the first), and it’s almost unfair how outstanding these two films turned out. They each generate inordinately high expectations based on the original popular novels, and both follow through with true-enough-to-the-book, expertly conceptualized and executed films. If only every adaptation could claim this status! The Hunger Games better be ready to bring it in March.
Extremely Loud is not perfect, but it is very close. Its biggest success is at the emotional level: themes of grief and loss echo personally with every movie-goer, and it’s hard not to revisit past personal pain as we watch Oskar grapple with the loss of his father after 9/11. Tonight, I heard the sniffles (and occasional sobs) of audience members all around me. I openly weeped throughout the entire two hours. Dialogue that in less capable hands may come off as trite or schmaltzy (“I love you and I don’t say it often enough”) triggers the tears with real emotional honesty.
Minor gripe: I don’t think they clearly establish Oskar’s autism in the beginning. His early idiosyncrasies get odd laughs from the audience because it’s not immediately clear that he is autistic (later in the film we find out he was tested for Asperger’s and the results were inconclusive). I think it only bugs me because on page one of the novel it is clear that this boy falls somewhere on the autism spectrum (because of how he processes information), and in the film it’s not as immediately apparent, which leads to some awkward laughs from the audience before they figure it out.
Some interesting tidbits from the Q&A with Stephen Daldry: They found Thomas Horn (Oskar) on Teen Jeopardy, where he won $31,000. He had never acted before; Daldry rehearsed with him for months using Stanislavsky’s method of connecting actions with emotions. Viola Davis took the role of Abby Black because it was not written as African American, and that appealed to her. Tom Hanks spent a lot of time off-set with Thomas Horn so that he could cultivate being “super dad” to him. Extremely Loud was one of the first films to shoot in Aria RAW (not sure if I’m spelling Aria right) and Daldry suspects that by next year most awards season fims will shoot in this format.
(photo via)
