Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close (2011)

Best movie ever!

Admirable film.

it is finally so absorbing because it plays like a lyrical road odyssey that’s also a detective story.

The film makes a home in your brain and the only cure is to see it again.

This is one of the better films that extrapolates from that horrible day on September 11, 2001 in a moving fictional story. Although sentimental in tone, it is difficult not to admire the stellar cast and the clever plotting of the film.The principal conceit of "Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close" is the process of a search that is foreshadowed at the start of the film of the young Oskar Schell taking the challenge of his dad to search for a non-existent sixth borough of New York. That search transitions into a search for the missing box that will be unlocked from a key left by the father prior to his death on 9/11.The little kid who plays the role of Oskar was described in the DVD bonus segment as a child genius who learned Mandarin and won a bundle on the television show Jeopardy, prior to being recruited for the film. The mantra of Oskar is "never stop looking"--words that were circled on a newspaper clipping left behind by the father.My favorite character in the film was the Renter, an elderly man from the old country who befriends Oskar and helps him on his quest. Max Von Sydow was terrific in the role of the "silent" character, whose past life is never revealed in the film. Could the Renter be the father of the dad, whose name appears on the logo of the family jewelry business, Schell & Son Jewelers?SPOILER ALERT: The mother character, played effectively by Sandra Bullock, loved the son so much that she was shadowing his every move in the long search through the boroughs of New York for the missing lock. She met with the various Black members on the son's checklist, preparing the people for his visit. Unfortunately, this moving part of the story led to a major plot hole, as the couple who owned the vase and ran the estate sale should have been alerted to the importance of the key by the mother's visit, prior to the arrival of the son. There were other instances where the film stretched credibility. It tended to venture into the area of the supernatural, just falling short of a film like "The Sixth Sense" in the improbable search of young Oscar and the connection of sixth borough plot with the lock-and-key. It was almost as if the Renter could have been a figment of Oskar's vivid imagination. At some point, the filmmakers had the obligation to have everything make sense in such a realistic film.

Set the controls for your suspension of disbelief to max before watching this one folks. You'll also have to forgive it for its schmaltz and melodrama along the way. On the other hand, there are some nice moments, and the movie's treatment of death, loss, searching for answers when there are none, community, rebuilding, and understanding is touching. Director Stephen Daldry is wise in exercising restraint about the horrors of 9/11, and Thomas Horn and Tom Hanks turn in strong performances. Do fathers like the one Hanks plays actually exist? Perhaps not, but the balance shown with bad fathers in the film may strike a chord with anyone who has conflicting feelings about family members. I loved seeing Max von Sydow at age 82 in his supporting role, and that alone made it worth seeing for me. On the whole, your emotions will either be stirred or you'll find yourself cynical, and I suppose I experienced a bit of both and ended up in the middle. It is surprising to me that the film was nominated for Best Picture. Its heart was in the right place but it just wasn't subtle enough in its execution to recommend without reservations.

a film not about emotions. but an embroidery of emotions. the emotions of a child looking for an answer. an isolated boy in the autism circles. a film about perception . about fear. about insecurity. about the change of a world and the lost of the axis of this world. a personal story who is universal, maybe, for the science to remind old states of each from us. but it is not a story about 9/11. it is not a homage. it is just a precise drawing about a run and the final answer who defines entire search. a boy with a key. in the middle of a huge place. this is all. only emotions. as bricks for a real useful film.

Just as it took British Director Paul Greengrass to address the issue of the September 11th flight that was brought down by its passengers in Pennsylvania in his 2006 film "United 93", so here it is left to Britain's Stephen Daldry to try to make some sense of the unbelievable tragedy and loss that the destruction of the Twin Towers denoted (for people all over the world). That was always going to be a tough one, and all the more so when whimsy and near-fantasy occasionally seem to mingle in with the biggest of all real-life stories, in which any form of good news is at an absolute premium.Doubtless many will feel that Daldry has not done the job properly, given the immense sensitivity of the issue, but that cannot be my view. "Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close" is actually a masterpiece that puts this reviewer strongly in mind of the very best work of Polish Director Krzysztof Kieslowski, with huge meaning imbued in an eclectic mix of one-off, chance-based mega-events and the ostensibly-uninspiring and uninteresting minutiae of everyday life. Here is a film of more than 2 hours that twists and turns, goes fast and slow, shifts emotions, seems to be becoming too light-hearted and then switches to deadly serious, and perhaps even taunts its viewers to reach for the "off" button more than once as it peaks into its most way-out moments.My strong advice is not to do that.Of course, Daldry had some help here, in the unlikely and amazingly appealing form of "Jeopardy"-winning schoolkid (and non-actor) Thomas Horn, who appears aged around 14 and has not the slightest difficulty in upstaging veteran co-stars Tom Hanks (playing the father marooned on the 106th floor of one of the WTC Towers), Sandra Bullock (playing the widowed mother) and Max Von Sydow (playing the father's father, traumatised into muteness by his earlier-life experiences). It is a remarkable performance as a bright, intense, over-sensitive, troubled boy with mental-health issues even prior to 9/11, whose dad bonds with him and attempts to draw him out with search-games that offer an intriguing (and actually quite authentic-looking) mix of fantasy and science. The early scenes with father and boy together will invoke something special in any actual (or would-be) father of sons who takes the trouble to watch.Given that the New York background also allows for wartime Germany side-stories, as well as the tales of countless others putting a brave face on misery and loss, the September 11th events are - miraculously as it may seem - put in some kind of wider context in this movie. New York stars here as no-nonsense, but also eccentric and diverse, tough, with a wry sense of humour - the place that draws and has drawn refugees, sufferers and exiles for centuries. All of that is present, and much more besides, but the message is of victory over sadness and gloom, of people learning to own their sadness and shedding their selfish concerns to help somebody else. The city of individualists somehow came together on 9/11, and the characters in this film do the same in response to events following on from that tragedy-cum-outrage. Ironic that brutality and suffering are needed to bridge what would otherwise be unbridgeable gaps, yet amazing and beautiful that that can be so. At moments, this movie trumpets to the skies the true wonder that is man's humanity - rather than inhumanity - to man.This is then a simultaneously warm and weird offering that steps beyond any obvious background of description, yet offers something new and fresh and supremely meaningful.Genuinely what movies should be about.