Count on post-viewing arguments after watching “Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close,” a tear-jerker that counts on reactions to 9/11 as a starting place, with one’s feelings toward amazingly precocious children serving as kindling.
We have Thomas Horn as 9-year-old Oskar Schell, only child of Thomas (Tom Hanks) and Linda (Sandra Bullock). Thomas dies on the 105th floor of the World Trade Center and we’re at the cemetery where Oskar sits in the limousine while Linda buries an empty coffin. The boy idolized his dad, who made up silly games, like a huge fantasy about a missing “sixth borough” of New York, maybe a northern relative of Atlantis. The relationship was a good one, and the pain is obvious.
And then then boy finds a key in a small envelope with the word “Black” written on it. He takes the key to a neighborhood locksmith, played by a long-ago Rep company member, Stephen McKinley Henderson, wearing a yarmulke. They decide it may be a name, and Oskar decides he’ll visit all the Blacks in the five boroughs. He borrows phone books from the doorman (John Goodman in a neat cameo), finds several hundred, and starts his journey around the city, made improbably long by the fact that he won’t ride on subways or in buses. He carries a tambourine, his old ploy to help nervousness. Please don’t ask why. The movie says so, and so did Jonathan Safran Foer’s novel and Erioc Roth’s screenplay.
At home, Oskar’s love for fantasy and game shows in his use of a walkie-talkie to contact his grandmother (Zoe Caldwell), who lives across the airshaft in the next building. A strange old man (Max von Sydow) shows up there from time to time, and begins to follow Oskar. He does not speak, using a note pad, plus tattoos with “yes” on his right hand, “no” on his left.
Of course, Oskar meets mostly warm and loving people, like Abby Black (Viola Davis),
who welcomes him and cries over his story while her husband (Jeffrey Wright) is preparing to
leave her.
The use of 9/11 footage can either emphasize Oskar’s tale or be seen as a cheap and
tawdry device. The horror of the day, and director Stephen Daldry’s use of it can fit almost any
interpretation. I found it just another device, and not overdone. Others will despise it. Young
Horn is quite good, and I found him quirky and likable, with moments when I saw myself and
some of the equally quirky things I did as a kid growing up in the city.
Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close opens at several theaters
— Joe