Big Screen Peter: Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close

From the outset, death is an indelible, omnipresent character in “Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close”  — a silent supporting actor that both propels the movie forward and charges it with a current of tangible urgency.

Thomas Schell, played by Tom Hanks, is a victim of the 9/11 attacks, dying in one of the World Trade Towers. Surviving him are his wife Linda (Sandra Bullock), his immigrant mother (Zoe Caldwell), and his precocious son, Oskar (Thomas Horn).

A possible sufferer of Asperger's, Oskar has trouble coping with reality.  The attacks on 9/11 — and the emotional fallout of losing his father — have compounded his natural tendencies.  He becomes evermore withdrawn into his own head. And the movie seeks to play upon his uniqueness, seeking to invest the audience in his quirks.

Instead, however, his advanced maturity gives the child not an air of amusing precocity, but one of maddening vanity. It's difficult to see him as anything but a pampered and unduly humored youth. In short, a microcosm of all that is wrong with the self-esteem focused child-rearing techniques of PC bohos.

Yet, “Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close” is his story. And it's his search for meaning in death, via a hidden message from his father, that creates within the movie a much larger tapestry of motives and emotions. It's in this suburbia of characters that we can find a vestige of emotional urgency.

Which is as damnable as it is praiseworthy. The richness and depth within “Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close” should emanate from Oskar and his tribulations, not the lives of those he touches. That it’s the latter is nothing contrived by those who created it. No, it's mere byproduct and certainly only worthy of a back-handed compliment.

There is nothing overly unique or novel about the story itself. It plays on the emotions of viewers. Which isn't itself an overly unique or novel commentary on the movie either, for all stories seek that. And to even be moderately successful, to even posses a reason for being, a tale must be able to count on the emotions of its viewers. It must be able to make us sad or happy. There must be an investment of some kind.

Unfortunately for “Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close,” that investment comes with little else. It's just a movie that depicts the overtly sad and pitiable existence of humanity through the eyes of a broken, neurotic boy. It teaches no lessons. There are no rewards for having viewed the movie. In the end, there's just a modicum of closure. A sort of sad, happy ending where nothing is solved, but acceptance is achieved.

Like the viewers themselves, it's time to move on. Time to live. For such a messed up, bratty little kid, it's world changing. For us? It's just another day that happened to be interrupted by a runny nose and some tears.

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