An Extreme Surprise

By Bruce Lyons

Hollywood,CA(Hollywood Today)2/12/12/—I just had an unforgettable movie experience that took me totally by surprise. The film was “Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close”, directed by Steven Daldry, starring Sandra Bullock, Tom Hanks, Viola Davis, Zoe Caldwell, Jeffrey Wright, Max von Sydow and an incredible thirteen year old newcomer named Thomas Horn.  A truly marvellous cast. Moreover, I saw it with a great audience – an indelible reminder why movies are made. Films are homeless vagabonds until they reach the hearts of an audience.  I am glad it has been nominated for Best Picture in this year’s Academy Awards.

Though I risk sounding too poetic, I will say that it was an emotional revelation. I don’t think I’ve ever encountered an audience that fell into so many different grades of silence as an ensemble. I always thought silence was just silence; apparently not in Burbank, California, where I saw this film. They were as surprised as I was. I’ve been stumbling about for days trying to find words that will hit the mark and convey a sense of the quality of those silences that were set against the backdrop of the 911 catastrophe – but great works demand their freedom and tend to throw off the verbal tethers imposed upon them by others. Never mind.  I must give it a shot anyway.  I won’t feel right if I don’t.

I had no intention of seeing this film. The critical buzz that surrounded it for some weeks had acted like a fast-acting insect repellent, effective enough to keep me – and undoubtedly many others – away from it. We were deciding in advance that we did not like it – but without a satisfactory basis for our presumption.  Fortunately, fate works in strange ways with its uncanny knack for disregarding instinct-numbing hearsay, while also managing to outwit my own dreary susceptibilities.

I confess I have been left a bit speechless by this utterly beautiful piece of cinema. If we can speak of emotional illumination that overflows its own container, this film offered an amazing demonstration of it. And this overflow immediately connected me to the audience – qualitatively enhancing the experience.  I did not feel like an isolated spectator at any time. Strangely and gratifyingly, I felt like I was a member of the film; a part of its story; one of the family. Their apartment was my apartment; their city was my city; their desires were my desires; their difficulties were my difficulties; and their neighbors were my neighbors. I don’t remember when I last identified with a film in this way. At no time did the film ever alienate me with excess or confront me with an unbridgeable credibility gap.  Any flights of fancy seemed to spring from the rapidly fluctuating imagination of a growing 11-year-old boy, Oskar Schell, played with beautifully motivated skill by Thomas Horn, as he gradually comes to terms with the impossible reality of 911 through the awkwardly fitting armor of his own layered eccentricities. Horn’s accomplishment should have earned him an Oscar nomination, regardless of his age – a tender, but brilliantly focused, 13 years. The angles through which he permitted us to access his complex personality following the death of his father, Thomas Schell – played with perfect economical dexterity by Tom Hanks – constitute a new wonder in cinema. Moreover, all the cast members who surrounded him were flawless allies. Daldry’s direction never allowed our connection with this idiosyncratic youth to lapse until Oskar had become our own son; our own brother; our own grandson. I was with him every step of the way.  Moreover, the reality of 911 that pulsed silently in the background was too omnipresent and inevitably real to allow any narrative oddities to widen into disbelief. This is film direction at its best.

To reiterate, I was taken totally by surprise, having unfairly decided in advance that no film could ever do justice to the historic calamity we have all come to call 911, what Oskar – with his own turn of mind – refers to as “the worst day”.  But such prejudice on my part, in the end, turned out to be nothing but cowardice in disguise. Movies are great lenses through which we can change our view of reality. The emotion they generate becomes its own language and its own revelation. This film was a revelation without end. All I had to do was let go and accept the inevitable: a good film is a metaphor that touches upon a thousand and one truths simultaneously. And then, ironically, when it is good, the metaphor vanishes like fog and reality starts coming to life in you, the audience. It is a magical inversion that can also happen in great music or literature. What had been inaccessible becomes accessible. On the basis of hearsay and personal prejudice I had been anticipating irrelevant redundancy, but it never materialized. I expected manipulative sentimentality, but the characters were too fallible to elicit saccharine sympathy. Through relentless, beautifully cultivated empathy all the characters won our admiration, respect, affection and finally a genuine sympathy born from our own emotional identification – in no small part the direct result of the talent of all who made this film. So how did I end up seeing a film I had no intention of seeing? Where did my luck come from?

I was preparing an article on Kevin Mack, the visual effects supervisor for “Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close” and an Academy Award winner for “What Dreams My Come” (1998). The more interested I became in his accomplishments (“Fight Club”, “A Beautiful Mind”, “Vanilla Sky”, etc.) including his own digital paintings and sculptures, the more I realized I ought to go see the latest film lucky enough to benefit from his unique talent. Having seen it, I now have to ask myself why I was so certain in advance that I would not like it. Had I unwittingly placed the tragedy of 911 in a little box of my own making and no longer wanted anyone to disturb its precious content? Or did I feel 911 was already in the public domain and so belonged to everybody – a new piece of sacred ground – never again to be tread upon by anyone for their own personal purposes?

It is to the movie’s credit that it has evoked such questions. That is what movies do best, a quality they share with novels – to which this film owes its genesis, first penned by Jonathan Safran Foer and adapted to the screen by Academy Award winner Eric Roth (“Forrest Gump”). But how do you write anything about 911 without trivializing it? Too many people died – many of them heroically. Too many people watched the event on television. The social implications are so profoundly entangled all around our tense little planet, how could there be any hope of untangling it? How do you write about it without offending – or without believing that you are offending – those most directly impacted by the catastrophe and who are still impacted by it to this day? Moreover, how do you propose to actually execute a film that must itself be rooted in the black hole of 911 and not be swallowed by the depth of its horror?

The only answer I can come up with is simple: courage. This is a story about courage and what it can accomplish in both the young and the old, but at a scale that is accessible. Healing starts gently in order not to make the wound worse. There are times when it takes courage to be gentle even when you are dealing with apocalyptic violence and the searing pain that erupts from it. “Extremely Loud” is a demonstration of what courage can be and that which stirs it into action – all obstacles notwithstanding. It is about the courage to risk all on love without thought of loss, such as Oskar’s love for his father – Thomas Schell – developed with such infectious wisdom by Horn and Hanks; the courage to invent even when it seems childish, a conviction instilled in his son by Thomas himself; the courage to be yourself even when you feel ill-equipped to confront the blackest moment of the “worst day” with all your own quirks and afflictions heaped on your head.  There is no part of this heart-gripping story that is not touched by courage – all the way to the end – where an extra measure of it must be summonsed.

I owe something to the team that made this film because they opened me up like the proverbial onion and helped me find the elusive teardrop in the center that had been evading me for years.  Everything is in that teardrop – whether it be laughter or pain. The entire cast was endlessly enjoyable. Near the conclusion of the piece, Sandra Bullock proved once again what a master she is of emotional understanding. Without giving anything away I will say that the climactic scene between mother and son is something to behold. I really did not know how I was going to hold myself together. Fortunately, others around me were experiencing pretty much the same thing – a sort of emotional earthquake. The delicacy with which the film handles the actual events of 911 is so effective it triggered more emotion than any film I’ve ever known. Through trauma there is growth. You discover emotions you did not know were in you and with them, insights you forgot existed.  And when these emotions have flooded the hidden parts of the personality – normally dormant – then meaning can blossom in a much fuller capacity. With a beautiful modesty of means, Hanks’ character, Thomas, manages to leave behind seeds that seem to contain the mystery of everything. And by not speaking a single word, the mute “Renter” played by Max von Sydow, manages to embody the secret ambiguities of limitation that alone makes freedom real. Thomas Horn leaves us feeling – well it isn’t right to spoil the movie. Suffice to say that Horn’s performance is a great one that shapes the film’s conclusion. The closer you get to the core of a trauma the harder it is to find courage and the greater is the emotion that lies beneath the ego’s reluctant skin. “Extremely Loud” places you at exactly the right proximity so you are able to participate in Oskar’s transformation without recoiling in excessive shock.

This is a very skilled piece of work.  Every character has their story. It is as if concentric circles had been drawn around the former World Trade Center, now “Ground Zero”, and expanded to infinity. One senses that no part of the universe has failed to feel its impact – except by degree. And it won’t stop its reverberation. But this movie is not about special effects – it is about people – and their curious stories that spread out into intersecting space somewhere inside that circle. As the stories unfold you discover your own place in the circle that surrounds Oskar’s “worst day” and it is 911 – the silent partner of the film – that somehow gives measure to the immeasurable. But who can measure pain?  Healing is a process and it happens in layers. This film identifies the layers and one by one the actors respond to the expert direction that unlocks the emotion trapped in the depths. What Oskar cannot confess to one person he is able to confess to another – just as we do in life. His confession to William Black, played by Jeffrey Wright, is unforgettable, only to be surpassed by his final catharsis with his mother.

A trauma will expose as much weakness as it does strength. “Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close” is as much about flaws and fallibilities as it is about overcoming the elements that impede what you are. There is a lot about Oskar that is not likeable which is exactly why many of us can identify with him and his mysterious passage from child to adult – a mystery that often fails to follow a linear path when life intrudes too abruptly. This amazing film mixes past and present with the best use of flashbacks I’ve ever seen, successfully evoking the disruptive force of 911. A year after the catastrophe, Oskar must start searching as the numbness begins to wear off. When rummaging in his father’s closet he knocks over a vase that breaks – releasing a key that, for the boy, holds unlimited potential. Attempting to fill the void left by his missing father, everything becomes a clue. Oskar’s inventive imagination is ignited as he senses on some level that the broken vase is releasing him toward some sort of rebirth.

If you are going to catch this film down the road the element of surprise is important, so I should not give away the whole plot. The key released by the broken vase sparks a quest – and like all quests it turns out quite different from what a boy’s expectation could allow. But there is also an occasion for profound guilt that hounds Oskar so deeply he must try and do something about it. The key becomes his excuse to both search and run. Sometimes guilt is so painful it makes us angry that life would ever generate occasions for such guilt to begin with. Oskar just wants to flee it. The Renter helps to halt such subterfuge, and Oskar is gradually forced to confront this guilt with his mother. Thomas Horn’s ability to play smug, scared and defensive is brilliant, and contributes enormously to his hour of tribulation when he finally must find the courage to face his mother and redeem his own multi-layered attempt to deny her love. Fortunately, his dad also understood that conquering fear is a process that happens in steps – conveyed with a cagey love by Hanks. So he left behind something for Oskar to strive for continuously. This is a moment of particularly great acting by both Bullock and Horn. Both should have received Oscar nominations for it. On the other hand, the performance itself may well have been its own reward.

“Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close” did not merely evoke memories of 911. What this movie has done is capture the specific paths taken by a group of New Yorkers who are compelled to escape the impact of the horrific concussion, the paralysing hole, the blackness of Oskar’s “worst day”. And no matter what concentric each of us finds ourselves standing on, the story is about all of us. We grow deeper and we ask deeper questions about our actions, our intentions, our international relationships, our lives within our own families and how we regard our neighbors and the phenomenal universe that has us in its embrace – even as we squirm, laugh, curse, rebel, weep and laugh again. The path opens us up and out to that immense potential that is always there, forever prompted by the colossal echo of 911.

Sometimes when truth is in abundance, joy comes softly and so often what is large can only be seen when it is reflected in what is small. I can only describe the ending of “Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close” as beautiful. For that reason the audience I was part of applauded. Together, we did not quite sound like human hands clapping because nobody wanted to tread carelessly on anybody else’s experience. But we all applauded anyway as if we were beating our collective wings like thousands of birds clustered along the sea shore.  I am very happy that this film was made.  By bringing me close again to 911 through such an inventive story, it went far in helping heal a wound that still needs attention. The film deserves to be fully recognized for its utterly human courage. It was an extreme surprise.