Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close (**3/4)

I’ve not read either of Jonathan Safran Foer’s novels—only excepts from each—but he obviously doesn’t go in for subtlety. The first, Everything Is Illuminated, is written in an ersatz syntax parodying that of an an Eastern European immigrant. The second, adapted here by screenwriter Eric Roth (Munich, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button) and director Steven Daldry (The Hours), is told in the voice of an extremely bright 12-year-old.* They’re mysteries wrapped in tragedies, and not just any tragedies, but the Holocaust in the first case and 9/11 here. (Oskar is played by Thomas Horn, a newcomer who definitely knows how to convey smarts, having been a Jeopardy Kids Week champion.)

Young Oskar’s father has died on what he refers to as the “worst day”; he happened to be in one of the Twin Towers. That fact figures in the story, significantly but peripherally, as when Oskar insists, to his mother’s (Sandra Bullock) consternation, that without a body there can only be a “pretend funeral.” The deceased, played by Tom Hanks in flashbacks, is the sort of dad who insisted that New York City had a now-lost “sixth borough” and from time to time produces “evidence.” The flashbacks are meant not to convey that he was a kook, but that he invested his son with a sense of wonder. One wonders if he also invested him with the sense of superiority the character conveys.

The mystery has to do with a key left behind. Armed only with a name — Black — and New York City phone books, Oskar (who’s a little Asperger-y) begins a systematic search for the lock that fits the key. (As with many New Yorkers, he seems not to consider the possibility that some people live in places outside the five boroughs.) I suppose there are brainy kids who might be like this, but must Oskar be so irritating? (Probably this is not Horn’s fault.) He irritates his mother; he irritates the staff in his building; he irritates the mute old man (Max von Sydow) who boards with his grandmother in an adjacent building. He’s indeed extremely loud. Now, I don’t mind flawed heroes. The heroine of the recent The Hedgehog, for example, who is the same age as Oskar and possibly even brainier, is flawed, but she’s not as irritating. Also, that movie less transparently— pun intended—tugs at the heartstrings.

Some people will surely find this extremely, incredibly manipulative, and I don’t entirely disagree. But I’m going to say just barely that I liked it, because I liked the mystery of it and how it’s resolved, because von Sydow is as winsome as the boy is irksome and because Bullock seems like a real mother and not Sandra Bullock being Sandra Bullock. I don’t think the movie comes close to being worthy of its Best Picture Oscar nomination, but it’s diverting if the above caveats don’t distract you.

*However, he is quite incorrect in claiming that there are more people alive today than have ever lived before. Not even close, as it turns out.

IMDB link

viewed 1/12/12:30 pm at Ritz East [PFS screening] and reviewed 1/20/12 and 1/30/12