Movie Summary of Extremely Loud And Incredibly Close by Michael The Moviegoer.

EXTREMELY LOUD AND INCREDIBLY CLOSE = ***

“A Silent Performance Shines In ‘Extremely Loud’”

A decade after the tragic events of September 11, 2001, I still hear people asking if it’s too soon to make movies about that day. But if you’re waiting for the wounds to heal, that’s likely never going to happen. Filmmaking is an art form. Filmmakers are artists. Art is personal expression. In a free society art should never be suppressed just because some people might not want to look at it.

World War II ended in 1945. But as early as 1942 there were already dozens of commercial films on the subject. It was only a few years after the end of the Vietnam War when Hollywood made films like “Coming Home,” “The Deer Hunter” and “Apocalypse Now”.

But the events of 9/11 were so thoroughly photographed that re-creating them for dramatic purposes just feels strange. Many eyewitness accounts of the actual events have claimed that the real thing “looked like a movie”.

For those seeking escapist entertainment, revisiting the events of 9/11 might not be on their agenda. But how can anyone explain why 2006’s “United 93” was mostly dismissed by moviegoers who then flocked to see “Snakes On A Plane” (a film about terrorists unleashing deadly reptiles on a passenger jet in flight) released only four months later?

Over 2000 people died in the attacks on the World Trade Center in lower Manhattan. Each one of them and their families have stories to tell. But none have been honored with a film about how 9/11 changed their lives. Instead we get “Extremely Loud And Incredibly Close” which is a film adaptation of a fiction novel about a fictitious man who dies in the World Trade Center and how is wife and young son must live through that loss.

Perhaps the question that should be asked is if it’s too soon to create fiction out of that horrible reality. It was 60 years after the attack on Pearl Harbor when Michael Bay made a film about it with a fictional story filled with fictional characters. That didn’t seem to disturb anybody. But with the 9/11 wounds still fresh, is now a good time to fictionalize the effects of that day? Personally I would rather learn of the true stories of heroism and loss. But everyone around the world was affected by the 9/11 tragedy, and all forms of expression should be welcome and encouraged by anyone wishing to help the world heal. Therefore, after having said all that, it’s time to stop hating the idea of films about 9/11 and embrace a movie like “Extremely Loud And Incredibly Close”.

Thomas Horn (who won Teen Jeopardy) stars as the young boy Oskar Schell who loses his father (Tom Hanks) in the 9/11 attacks. The movie is a psychological character study of this traumatized little boy who struggles with agonizing regret over how he reacted to the events on “the worst day” and his paranoia of living without his father in a post-9/11 world. His mother is played by Sandra Bullock in one of her strongest dramatic performances ever. A scene in which she and the boy argue over why they buried an empty coffin delivers the emotional explosion you expect from this film, but it’s short-lived.

The fictional story of how the boy runs all over New York looking for the owner of a mysterious key found among his father’s things is a bit cloying at times, and overly simplistic in its execution. In some ways, it’s reminiscent of Martin Scorsese’s fluffy family film “Hugo”.

The movie’s greatest moments belong to veteran character actor Max von Sydow who plays a man unable to speak. He communicates by writing on a notepad. With half-a-century of classic film roles on his resume, including 1973’s “The Exorcist”, Max von Sydow might finally find himself with an Oscar for a role in which he doesn’t utter a single word. That’s just how good he is in this movie.

DVD Double Feature:

Oliver Stone’s 2006 film “World Trade Center” combined fictional stories and characters with real people and real events to mixed results. Nicolas Cage plays a firefighter trapped in a collapsed World Trade Center tower. If the 9/11 wounds ever heal, this movie might work as a thrilling piece of escapist entertainment.

Michael The Moviegoer