Movie Review: Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close

The image of United Airlines Flight 175 flying into the South Tower is an image embedded into the minds of most Americans.

As the news footage played and replayed and was analyzed and reanalyzed, why our country was attacked, and for what reason, seemed like an inconclusive, endless cycle.

In “Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close,” 9-year-old Oskar Schell (Thomas Horn), who may or may not have Asperger’s syndrome, is damned with a similar fate. Oskar, as he states, is trying “to make sense of the things that don’t make sense.”
Oskar’s father Thomas Schell (Tom Hanks) is killed in the 9/11 attack, and Oskar is left to live with his mother (Sandra Bullock), as she tries to grasp raising him. And like news networks, Oskar listens to the six messages his father leaves him, while he is trapped in the burning building, and in them he searches for meaning, solace and a way to move on.
Directed by Stephen Daldry (“The Reader,” “The Hours”), and adapted for the screen, by Eric Roth (“Forrest Gump,” “The Curious Case of Benjamin Button”),  from a novel by Jonathan Safran Foer, “Incredibly Close” is a meditative piece on 9/11. And while 9/11 is its backdrop, it is not exploited.
One year after his father dies, Oskar is still haunted by his father’s death, but is courageous enough to venture into his father’s closet for the first time since his death. In his father’s closet he finds an envelope with “Black” written on it, and inside, a key.
This begins Oskar’s coping mechanism. He discovers there are 472 people in New York with the last name of Black, and presumes the key must belong to one of them.
Oskar’s journey is both an innocent quest and an unpleasant realization, yet grieving with him feels liberating. Those perennial emotions released every time 9/11 comes around or is brought up are often inexplicable and wrongfully dealt with. Oskar’s onscreen attempt to manage these emotions is a mirrored image of the nationalist fervor our country and its citizens exhibit.
This film is an example of the ole adage, “there’s joy in the journey,” and Oskar discovers this.
Shot in vibrant, youthful colors, “Incredibly Close” is immersive in its child protagonist’s world, as the audience sees and hears as Oskar does. But, Oskar’s life isn’t the one of a normal 9-year-old. He is afraid of more things than he likes, he counts the number of lies he tells and he totes around a tambourine to calm him.
Watching Thomas Horn’s lamenting performance is the real show. As Daldry has proved in the past with both “The Reader” and “Billy Elliot,” he is adept in bringing out the best performances in the younger members of his cast.
And while the rest of the cast all give striking performances, Max Von Sydow, without a doubt, gives an utterly stellar performance as the mute Renter, a mysterious man staying in Oskar’s grandmother’s apartment. He conveys a life of anguish and regret through his woeful eyes, having to write his words on notepads and using the tattoos “yes” and “no,” on his hands, to communicate.
Composer Alexandre Desplat, as he continually proves, accentuates any scene he scores. In Both the “Ides of March” and “The Tree of Life” Desplat carefully animates the visual counterpart and garnishes it with auditory impact, and “Incredibly Close” is no exception. Desplat not only knows how the audience feels, but is so proficient with his music, that its effects cannot be overlooked.
“Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close” is similar to uncovering repressed emotions, and watching Oskar complete his quest is, in a way, a small reparation for the turmoil of 9/11.