REVIEW: Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close (12A)

9/11, the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center in New York and the Pentagon in Washington DC, took place less than a month before our first child was born. My wife and I wondered what sort of a world we were bringing a child into or even if there was going to be a world to bring them into as we watched images of the Twin Towers being attacked, on fire and, eventually, tumbling into piles of rubble.



It's unusual for Tom Hanks to be in a controversial movie, but Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close has received a lot of criticism from those who say that it is too soon to explore the emotions of that day in September 2001, and yet it isn't the first movie about the events that shook the world and changed everyone's lives since. Even with critics of the timing and suitability of the subject matter, and some other very negative reviews, the movie has been nominated for Best Movie at the Oscars, which take place on February 26th.

Stephen Daldry's movie is an adaptation of a novel, written in 2005, by Jonathan Safran Foer. The movie begins with a body falling from the sky - one of the "jumpers" who leapt from the WTC.

Oskar Schell (played by Thomas Horn in his first ever movie role, having been spotted as a winner on a kids' special of the quiz show Jeopardy) is the son of Thomas Schell (Tom Hanks), who died in the Twin Towers on 9/11.

Oskar recalls the scavenger hunts his father set up for him to help him deal with the real world as Oskar is, it is implied, borderline Asperger's. The hunts are meant to be a learning experience so that Oskar can learn that "if things were easy to find, they wouldn't be worth finding". The scavenger hunt starts at a playground swing in Central Park, where Thomas says he played as a child. Oskar, though, is afraid of swings.

Oskar school closes early on September 11th and when he gets home he finds six messages on the answer machine from his father. His mother (Sandra Bullock) is at work, so Oskar listens to the messages which say that his father is in the World Trade Center on the 105th floor of the North Tower. Oskar switches on the television and watches the TV news coverage of the events. As the Twin Towers collapse, Oskar realises his father has been killed and goes to hide underneath his bed.

A few weeks later Oskar tells his grandmother what happened and as they become closer Oskar's relationship with his mother worsens as she is unable to explain why the events of 9/11 and the death of Oskar's father happened.

One year on, Oskar decides to look through his father's closet and, in doing so, smashes a blue vase in which there is a key inside an envelope. On the envelope is the word "Black". Oskar decides to track down what the key fits will open. He looks up the name "Black" in the phone book and finds there are 417 people with that surname. And so Oskar sets about meeting all 417 people called Black to ask if they knew his father.

Well into his hunt, Oskar notices that an elderly man had moved into his grandmother's apartment. His grandmother describes him as a "stranger".

Calling on his grandmother, he meets the stranger (Max Von Sydow) and the two strike up a touching friendship. The stranger, known only as "The Renter" doesn't talk, perhaps because of a childhood trauma in the Second World War, so he communicates by writing messages on a notebook.

Eventually, Oskar does find where the key belongs and learns to confront many of his fears of the world.

Now, there are some lovely moments, and, yes, I admit it, there were a couple of times when I blubbed (but then I am known to cry at all sorts of films from Up! and Toy Story 3 to West Side Story and Scott of the Antarctic (yes, really)). The friendship between Oskar and The Renter is genuinely touching, and Max von Sydow's performance is beautifully expressive despite him not speaking (indeed, he is one of three actors nominated for an Oscar who says nothing!), but so much of the movie is overly long and clunky.

The basic premise of the movie, a young boy moving around Manhattan alone while his mother stays at home being depressed, is justified by a tortuous, unbelievable and clunky plot device late on.

Now, I'm normally someone who prefers movies to books, but maybe, just maybe, I can see that this might be better as a book. The web of small stories of all the people Oskar meets on his hunt just seem rambling and pointless in the movie but could each be explored more in a book. (I've not read the book, maybe that rambles and doesn't make complete sense either!).

And there's no real explanation of the title, which, after Martha Marcy May Marlene has to be the trickiest title to get right in many a year.

It's not an awful film, I've seen much worse, and worse films have ended up winning Best Movie at the Oscars, but, for me, this wasn't the movie I was hoping for, it didn't live up to the trailer which, I thought, looked inspiring, emotional and coherent.