Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close - Movie Review

By
Zora Flatley
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Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close

The film is based on a novel by Jonathan Safran Foer and is one of the very few films that do not spoil the novels as you read it, it was done beautifully even though there were some unclear details to the story and incomplete meaningless drama but the ending is going to get you no matter how heartless you think you are.

Tom Hanks is such a great actor, so comfortable in his own skin, that he makes you believe him right away. Like he’s your sibling or father or elder brother, you’d believe him, watch him and follow his lead! However, Tom Hanks isn’t really in this film, he is the background noise though, as a father that you lost, guiding you with his memories and soothing familiar tone of voice which makes it more relatable, in my opinion.

Before watching this film, I had come to the decision that I hated all American films centered on 9/11. I couldn’t empathize with any of them and they tended to be on the cheesier side. This film, in particular, is something else.

Imagine this, Tom Hanks is married to Sandra Bullock; what a really nice couple, right? They have this beautiful, smart, intelligent kid who has a passion for exploration, history, and science but he’s a little anti-social or on the spectrum.

Oscar, the kid, is very much influenced by his father of course who puts a lot of effort into encouraging him to go out, talk to strangers and feed his adventurous soul. They play these games together while the mother takes care of all the other details.

We, as the audience, experience the story through Oscar’s perspective and from what he remembers about 9/11 or as he calls it the worst day that he and all other students in the US were sent home early. The streets are filled with police cars, officers and noises or chaos and siren sounds.

As he goes up to his empty apartment, he switches the TV on and finds the World Trade Center with planes going right through the towers which shock him for a minute even though he doesn’t really understand what’s happening.

https://revyou.com/uploads/thumbnail-960/1595487303591Extremely-Loud-Incredibly-Close-2.webp Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close - Movie Review

Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close - Movie Review

He checks out the telephone and finds an unread message from his father asking if anybody’s home, looking for him. And the phone rings again, Oscar picks up and talks to his father only to find out that he is there, in the building where he had an important meeting to attend.

He calms Oscar down of course and tells him that everything will be alright and that they’re already getting the help they need and for Oscar to stay safe. Oscar goes back to watching the building from the TV screen and as the towers start to go down slowly, the phone rings again.

However, Oscar just freezes, he can’t move, he looks at the phone and is too scared to even go near it and pick up, not knowing what nightmare is waiting for him on the other end.

He makes sure all the messages and the calls disappear and hide them from his mother and grandparents like he doesn’t want them to experience what he went through. He hides them in a way that shows he is trying to protect them but letting those messages haunt him like a ghost, a shadow that never goes away.

The film is very real because it looks at the situation from the perspective of a smart kid who would have understood what’s happening with the world but he refuses because it made him lose someone he cares about. It doesn’t make sense and his mother fails to be able to talk to him about it or about anything else.

Like she doesn’t know what to do, nothing about the world we live in is going to make sense to that kid. Oscar takes all the anger and decides that his father must have left him something, one last adventure, he is looking for closure or something to give him some more time with his father.

But in the real world that doesn’t usually happen. The film shows that his father is in that anger, he finds him in the journey without even realizing it. As he goes around New York City every weekend tracking down people, asking them questions, hearing the stories and taking pictures of them.

Oscar experiences the world looking for one last moment with his father -one final message. A secret behind an anonymous key that he finds in his father’s closet but the key doesn’t lead him to anything about his father but to a story about someone else and their father.