Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close
Posted on January 19, 2012 at 5:59 pm
Jonathan Safran Foer’s acclaimed novel about a boy whose father was killed in the World Trade Center on 9/11 has been brought to the screen with great sensitivity and heart. Newcomer Thomas Horn plays Oskar, whose ferocious intellect overwhelms his social skills and may be on the autism spectrum. His father (Tom Hanks) understands him best and it is in their time together that Oskar feels most alive and most at home. Oskar’s happiest moments are solving the puzzles set by his father, whether oxymoron contests or treasure hunts. After his father’s death, Oskar searches for the final challenge he is sure his father must have left behind for him, some way to make sense his loss. He finds a blue vase in his father’s closet and when he breaks it, he finds a key in an envelope that says “Black.” He decides to visit everyone in the phone book named Black to see if he can solve at least one mystery in the midst of the senseless tragedy that has devastated his family, his city, and the world.
Oskar’s mother (Sandra Bullock) is withdrawn, scared, and angry. She never had her husband’s gift for reaching Oskar and making him feel safe. As Oskar goes off in search of his father, in a way he seems to be searching for his mother, too. The different people named Black that he tracks down feel like pieces of a puzzle, each unidentifiable and indistinct but somehow, put together, a picture of a piece of something whole begins to emerge. One of the people who opens the door to Oskar is played by Viola Davis in a performance of exquisite beauty. In her brief moments on screen she creates a character of such depth and complexity and humanity that she illuminates the entire film.
Oskar’s grandmother lives across the street and he can see her apartment from his window and communicate with her by walkie-talkie. She takes in a new, mysterious tenant known only as “the renter” (Max von Sydow) and Oskar goes to investigate. The renter is mute. He has “yes” and “no” tattooed on his palms and writes what he wants to say in a notebook. He agrees to accompany Oskar on his visits to Blacks.
Oskar finds an answer that is not what he was looking for or hoping for. But looking for something so far from home makes it possible for him to see what was in front of him all along that he could not face. He is able to tell his own story, finally. He is able to hear the stories of the renter and his mother. And it is only then that he can find the real message his father left behind.
Without speaking a word, Sydow conveys a sense of gravity and compassion, more eloquent than all of Oskar’s words. “The renter” balances Oskar — old and young, silence and constant talking, hiding and seeking. Both are damaged by the trauma of world events with the most personal impact and each expands the other’s spirit with a sense of possibility. The final revelation from Oskar’s mother proves the old saying that only a broken heart can hold the world.
, by Washingtonian Jonathan Safran Foer (
). Thomas Horn, winner of Teen Jeopardy, is outstanding in his first acting role as Oskar, a boy devastated by the loss of his father on 9/11. Sandra Bullock and Tom Hanks play his parents and Viola Davis and Max von Sydow are extraordinary as two of the people Oskar meets in his journey to try to make some sense of his loss.
There’s no meaner workplace in cinema history than this brutal and back-stabbing real estate company. Spacey’s electrifying performance shows that his self-loathing is only exceeded by his contempt for everyone around him. (Special credit to Alec Baldwin for a stunning turn as a guy from the home office brought in to give a pep talk: “Second prize is a set of steak knives. Third prize is you’re fired.”)
Reportedly, this screenplay was inspired by the author’s own experience. The assistant in the story gets his revenge on his sadistic bully of boss by torturing him, but in real life he just put his most appalling behavior up on screen.
He doesn’t yell. He does not insult his staff. He is just massively inconsiderate, making inane and dehumanizing and agonizingly insincere “requests.” I don’t know which is worse — the cover on the TPS reports or Hawaiian Shirt Day. (Special credit to screenwriter Mike Judge, the movie’s screenwriter, as Jennifer Aniston’s boss at Chotchkie’s, who tells her she should have more than the minimum flair.)
Jack Lemmon discovers that the only way to get ahead in this enormous insurance company is to let the boss use your apartment for his assignations.
She pretends to support her assistant’s dreams for advancement, but instead, she steals her ideas. I love her line about why she is sure her boyfriend (Harrison Ford in a magnificent performance) will propose: “We’re in the same city now, I’ve indicated that I’m receptive to an offer, I’ve cleared the month of June… and I am, after all, me.”
Based on interviews with many working women, Coleman’s character was designed to exemplify just about every awful characteristic: lazy, sexist, dishonest, incompetent, and predatory.
Until he learns a lesson from the three Christmas ghosts, Scrooge is a demanding, nasty, and of course very cheap boss who keeps poor Bob Cratchit underpaid and shivering in the cold.
Based on a real-life story, Laughton plays Captain Bligh, whose cruel treatment of his men led to a mutiny, putting him off the ship in a launch. (The real-life Bligh was exonerated after making it back to England in what is still an un-matched feat of navigational skill.)
Ethan Hawke plays a young police officer assigned to work with Washington’s character, a corrupt narcotics detective who manipulates and blackmails him, drawing him into a quagmire of corruption. Washington won an Oscar for his dazzling performance of a man who loves control but is losing his capacity to maintain it.
of the same name, that New York Giants lineman Lawrence Taylor changed the game. He went after quarterbacks like the Washington Redskins’ Joe Theismann, who received a career-ending injury because Taylor came after him in his blind spot. Hence the increased focus on protecting the quarterback, and that is the job for which Michael Oher (Quinton Aaron) seems to have been designed.