Movie Review: Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close

This is the (almost impossibly) dark horse in the Oscar race for Best Picture this year.  Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close has had its ups and downs in terms of buzz and critical response, and many thought it would slip through awards season under the radar, as it had until the Academy Award announced its 2012 nominations just a few weeks ago.  Since then, the film has enjoyed an uptick in people talking about it (of course, the talk has hardly been all flattering), mostly wondering how in the world it made the list of the nine best films of this year.

And now having seen it, I can tell you (with authority I've awarded to myself) that it made that list because it is one of the better movies of this year.  It is well-crafted and genuinely heartfelt, and the performances by everyone involved are superb.  Of course, it would appear that the majority of moviegoers over at Rotten Tomatoes disagree with me, but I'd like to make the case for disregarding their opinions.  This film is easy to fall into and enjoy immensely, there are simply a few things you need to keep in mind, things that the critics have been too quick on the draw to point to as reasons for the film's failure.

First, the film is not about 9/11.  That might sound strange, and I'll clarify:  it's not about 9/11 in the way you're expecting (and the way some of the ads have made it look).  Yes, they address the attacks and their impact, but from a singular perspective (Oskar and his family's), and the event itself is an impetus for the real story, rather than the story itself.  The real story here is one about the things and people we lose on our journey through life, and the sometimes difficult-to-see threads which tie us to one another.  It's a story about how everyone has a story, even one you might not anticipate on first meeting them, and that those stories can help us understand and co-exist with each other more than just about anything else.

Second, the film is not about autism.  Yes, the possibility of Oskar suffering from something on the autism spectrum (and I'd like to be clear that it is never confirmed, in the film nor the book, that he does) is an interesting facet of his character, and one the film chooses to highlight and make accessible rather than making it into a "there's something wrong with the kid" type of film.  However, I think Oskar can be read in a variety of ways, and the more important takeaway is how trauma can worm itself into our lives (this is showcased brilliantly in the differences between Oskar and "the renter", both traumatized by past events and both coping with it in unusual ways) and really impact who we are and how we interact with the world.  Oskar might have been any other child, a little bit quirky and socially inept but earnest, but it is the terrible thing he has experienced that exacerbates his stranger tendencies and drives his obsession with establishing a connection to his deceased father.

Finally, and perhaps most importantly, the viewer (most particularly those who've read the novel upon which the film is based) must bear in mind that while this might seem an imperfect adaptation, it really is doing the best it can.  Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close is a very complicated novel with (in typical Safran Foer fashion) numerous threads running through its narrative, connecting characters through space and time in unexpected ways.   A film adaptation was never going to successfully capture the novel's scope verbatim; rather, it sought (and in my opinion, succeeded) to serve as an interpretation of the book's essence, of painting its message with broad strokes rather than scrambling to include details.  Of course, it would have been great if we'd gotten the more fully-realized back story on the renter that the book provides, and yeah, it would have been cool to see even more of Oskar's various travels, but that might have taken away from the film's tone, and its expression of something really pure and human about the way we deal with our ties to other people, and the loss of those connections.

Just about every actor in this movie turns in a phenomenal performance.  Thomas Horn carries the admittedly difficult role of Oskar with visible dedication and passion (though his over-eager narration can be a bit much at times), Sandra Bullock and Tom Hanks are wonderful as his parents, and Max von Sydow gives the best silent performance not featured in The Artist of the year (his surprise nomination for Best Supporting Actor makes sense after just a few minutes of screen time).  Additionally, and on the unfortunate side, this film gives us the second moving, remarkable musical score for which Alexandre Desplat has not been awarded or even nominated (the first, of course, is last summer's Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2).  In my book there are few composers who really give voice to a film the way Desplat does, and it's about time he started earning more recognition for his work.

Book Review: The Submission by Amy Waldman

This novel, which made its debut just a few months ago, has already received huge amounts of praise.  Indeed, in the review that ultimately persuaded me to read it the writer hailed it as the best depiction of the post-9/11 environment in America that has been seen in the decade since the attack.  Now having read the book myself (though certainly not having read all of the other texts in contention for that particular article's praise), I can say that in many ways, I agree.

The Submission follows the lives of a handful of characters during the much-publicized debate over how to best memorialize the former site of the World Trade Center.  It takes place approximately two years after the dust has settled, but tempers and fears are still at an escalated level, to say the least.  In the opening chapters, we see a jury of various intellectuals and experts attempt to narrow down the candidates for a design and select a winner from thousands of anonymous submissions.  We meet Claire Burwell, a 9/11 widow who has been given the nearly impossible task of representing all the men and women who lost loved ones that day.  She advocates heartily for a beautiful design that she feels will best embody a message of both remembrance and healing, and manages to capture the necessary votes to declare it the winner.

Of course, the story is far from over.  The winning design is revealed to have been dreamed up by an American Muslim man living in New York.  Mohammed Kahn is as talented and insightful as he is disagreeable and arrogant.  And if that weren't difficulty enough, the news breaks to the press that a Muslim designer has been selected to memorialize the terrorist attack victims, igniting a sprawling and fiery backlash from many corners.  We as readers are provided a vivid account of each player's psyche, and each seems to have something valid to offer, from Kahn to Claire (who now has to defend him to the enraged families she is meant to represent), to a grieving protest leader, to a frightened immigrant husband who lost her husband in the attack but has not been given the right to acknowledge her grief.

As the debate descends into a state of publicity-fueled mayhem, each page offers more and more to consider.  Here in 2011, ten years after that awful day, we have been able to soothe some of our anger, and rationality has largely returned.  It is thus the perfect time to take our patchy attitudes of tolerance and turn them on their heads, to make us question our own values, and most importantly, try to imagine what stance we would take in such an impossible situation.  At first it seems obvious:  the designer who won should be allowed to design the memorial, no question about it.  But as more and more of the story is revealed, as character's truest beliefs and motives come to life, a black-and-white question becomes more and more colored in shades of grey.  And as someone who just six weeks ago was bombarded with the myriad TV specials and newspaper articles commemorating the attacks' anniversary, I think shades of grey might just be the most accurate way to truly summarize this nation's collective feelings about and understanding of what we went through that day, and what it meant.

If there is anything to criticize about this book, it is that the prose itself seems a bit awkward at times, almost as though Waldman didn't consider how it might sound read aloud or how it might be better phrased to prevent the reader from having to stop and start while trucking through dense paragraphs.  Waldman lucks out, though, because the narrative itself is compelling enough to prompt the reader to plow through the rougher bits.  The characters may be clumsily depicted at certain moments, but looking at the vibrancy of the broad strokes allows for a much better picture. 

And the final thing I'll say about this book is something I almost never say about any book:  I think this should be adapted into a film.  I am usually against books being made into films, primarily because so many beloved stories have been butchered by the Hollywood treatment.  However, I think if this book were allowed to become a thoughtful, honest film, it would do a lot of good.  This is primarily because (as judgmental as it might sound), the people to whom this book's message can teach the most are not necessarily the people I envision picking it up at their local bookshop (assuming said bookshop hasn't bankrupted and closed yet).  I hate to admit it, but if this were presented visually, with an attractive/recognizable cast and a script which smooths over the flaws in Waldman's writing, we could have a genuinely compelling, intellectually and culturally important film on our hands. 

I think I understand now, having read it, why that article named this book as the best representation of 9/11's aftermath.  It doesn't seek to sentimentalize anything or take advantage of the reader's emotional connection to the event to tell the story; it simply tells the story from a few narrow viewpoints, and manages to bring you back to that moment in our history without invoking any of the actual imagery that has been so imprinted in our minds.  Waldman speaks not from a soapbox but from the middle of a diverse crowd, offering snapshots of ordinary people dealing with extraordinary circumstances, and attempting to navigate them as ethically as they know how.