Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close

Dear readers,

I am generally an advocate of allowing film adaptations of books to take artistic liberties. Far too often I hear people complain about how some minor character or call back from a book was cut from the movie version. Other times I hear that the movie simply wasn't as good with no deeper explanation (which makes sense because we tend to bond with characters when they are new). Occasionally I blame the book for being bad (ie. Twilight) but often I blame it on over zealous fans.

For this film, I know exactly what to blame it on. You see, when I first read the book Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close I wasn't sure I knew what to feel about it. For those who are unaware, the book presented three complementary narratives discussing communication, death and the horrors of war. Our main narrative follows Oskar Schell as he attempts to decipher what he views as the last message left to him by his father before his father died in 9/11. Understandably, this quest involves exploring the five boroughs to meet everyone there named "Black". The second narrative is that of Thomas Schell Sr.- Oskar's Grandfather- through letters to his unborn child explaining his life in Dresden before the fire bombing and why he fell out with his wife. The third narrative is of Oskar's Grandmother done in the form of letters to Oskar about her perspective on why her marriage fell a part. Each of these segments often include full page pictures, one phrase/word pages and (at one point) several blank pages.

Now what I won't criticize the film for are these: A. Making Oskar autistic (while Jonathon Safran Foer has said that Oskar was never meant to be autistic- although one could read the character as such- I will not criticize the film for this change because it came up that Oskar could be read as autistic in a college discussion by some one who had never seen the film); B. The removal of characters (The movie is over two hours long, of course some characters are going to be fused or removed). So lets get to what I will criticize this film for.

The first thing I need to criticize is the voice overs. I firmly believe in the visual powers of film and I hate it when the character I'm supposed to like is telling me what I can already see on the screen. The second thing to criticize is how much his father showed up. Now, I know this may be weird to criticize as most people tell me that the thing they hated most was how little Tom Hanks appeared. The thing is though, his character is dead when the film begins. We didn't need to be as flash back heavy in the beginning to get that he was a good guy and that we should miss him. The point is moving on, not hanging onto (also in some of that time we could have had the interview with the deaf Black or Ron could have appeared or any other countless possibilities).

Another thing to criticize is the truncation of metaphors from the book-most notably the Sixth Borough metaphor. The book made the sixth borough be the story of the character's relationships with each other, carefully crafted to tell story of Oskar's family. Here it served only as a metaphor for letting go, which I felt was a wasted potential.

The final big thing to criticize is the removal of the two complementary plots. I can understand why this is done (as mentioned earlier its a long film from Oskar's point of view already) but that doesn't exclude the fact that the bombing of Dresden was, by far, the most brutal and striking scene in the book. Given how flash back heavy the movie already was by the point Thomas Schell Sr. was introduced, I find it hard to understand why there wasn't a Dresden flashback along with his rather vague story.

Now onto what I liked. First off is the acting. Given what everyone has said about the film, I figured that the entire thing would be atrocious-especially the acting. When I had first heard that they were having a child actor portray a character with Asperger's (small note: in the film Oskar refers to it as Asperger's Disease. It is not Asperger's Disease but rather the DSM-IV refers to Asperger's as a disorder. Given that the DSM-IV was released in 2000 Oskar should be aware of its standing in 2002 and the writers of the film should be aware of its standing in 2011) I thought that he would be terrible. I was wrong, I thought he was great. In fact, the acting was all around great in the film.

The other thing I liked was when the film actually tried to use its visual abilities-and damn were they striking. Don't believe me? Look up the sensory overload scenes some times. Once Oskar starts to get panicked and the film tries to overload us, it actually does a pretty decent job of it. I have to give kudos to them for that.

So, did I like the film? Yes, but only as a stand alone film. Now that I've seen it I can reliably say that I know why people don't like it: It is not the book. And that may sound like a silly reason but it really isn't. The book had multiple ongoing stories and extremely complex characters, a few of which ended up destroying their relationship due to a lack of communication. Oskar's long monologues felt more natural in the books while the movie the first eleven minutes were too crowded with them. This really is a case of the movie not being capable of standing up to the book.

Hoping this was enjoyable,

Mike Hand