EXTREMELY LOUD AND INCREDIBLY CLOSE
Directed by: Stephen Daldry
Written by: Eric Roth (screenplay), Jonathan Safran Foer (novel)
Starring: Thomas Horn, Sandra Bullock, Tom Hanks, Max Von Sydow, Viola Davis, Jeffrey Wright
Published in 2005, Jonathan Safran Foer’s second novel, “Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close,” became, like his first, “Everything is Illuminated,” a bestseller. Some critics, however, were less than enthusiastic about Safran Foer’s decision to center his second novel on an unrealistically verbose, ultra-bright, emotionally stunted preteen and his attempts to cope with the loss of his father on 9/11. Whatever Safran Foer’s intentions, he wanted to tell a deeply personal story, a personal story centered on a super-smart, emotionally stunted preteen and his search for meaning after losing his father on 9/11. Multiple Oscar-nominee director Stephen Daldry inexplicably felt compelled to bring “Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close” to the big screen for another Oscar run, spending five years on the adaptation of Safran Foer’s idiosyncratic novel. Five years wasn’t enough.
As a rule, first-person narratives like “Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close,” are both extremely hard and incredibly difficult to translate from the printed page to the celluloid or digital screen. Safran Foer’s hero-protagonist, Oskar Schell (played by “Jeopardy” winner Thomas Horn in the film), a brilliant, if emotionally stunted, nine-year old, never stops talking, offering one idiosyncratic observation about himself and the New York City around him. He’s prone to tangents and digressions that tell us a great deal about Oskar and his attempt to accept his father’s death on 9/11, but often little about the narrative itself, ostensibly a search for the lock to a mysterious key Oskar finds hidden inside a vase left behind by his father, Thomas (Tom Hanks). Oskar has just one clue: the name “Black” written on the yellow envelope that contained the key.
Daldry doesn’t attempt to solve the problem of Oskar’s first-person narration in the novel. Instead, he simply brings Oskar’s inner monologues into the adaptation wholesale. Oskar talks and talks and never stops talking. He never stops talking to himself and, presumably to the audience sitting in a movie theater. He describes the world around him, the same world we see with Oskar, the same world Daldry and his production designer bring to the screen in painstaking detail. Daldry failed to ask himself a question any filmmaker considering the liberal use of voiceover narration in film should ask himself: Is it necessary? Does it provide insight into character (the narrator’s or someone else’s)? Is it merely descriptive, thus making it redundant? Or, to put it another way, can a particular scene convey the same level of information or detail without the voiceover narration? Answer “yes” to the first question and the voiceover narration stays; answer “no” and the voiceover goes.
That, of course, doesn’t even touch on whether Oskar has Asperger’s. Most readers and some critics assume he does. Per Oskar, however, the results of testing Asperger’s weren’t definitive, leaving him (and us) in narrative limbo. Whatever the answer, Oskar’s selfishness and self-absorption often make him a uniquely unsympathetic, unlikeable hero-protagonist. EXTREMELY LOUD AND INCREDIBLY CLOSE could have been easily, more accurately retitled EXTREMELY ANNOYING AND INCREDIBLY CLOYING. Oskar’s search for “Black,” assuming it’s the name of a person and not something else, leads the transit-phobic Oskar to the five boroughs, first alone, later with the not-so-nimble assistance of a mute, elderly man (Max von Sydow) who rents a room from Oskar’s grandmother. Through the search, Oskar gradually, fitfully learns a life lesson: He’s not, as he assumes, alone in his grief. Others grieve too, regardless of whether they lost a loved one on 9/11 as Oskar did.
Ultimately, Oskar’s journey fails to be as affecting, moving, or poignant as Daldry had hoped it would be, partly due to the misguided, errant adaptation of Safran Foer’s novel, and partly (if not mostly) to Horn’s miscasting as Oskar. Whether Daldry chose badly or lost his ability to direct young actors, Thomas Horn gives an uneven performance (and that’s putting it kindly). He’s rarely convincing as the verbose Oskar, breathlessly running through his lines without pause for emphasis or inflection. When he does pause, it’s just to catch his breath or remember the next line of dialogue. In one or two instances, however, Horn’s rawness as an actor serves him and the scene well. Unfortunately, those scenes occur too infrequently to make EXTREMELY LOUD AND INCREDIBLY CLOSE anything but a singularly frustrating experience.
