Candid Article 17

Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close

Straight off, I would just like to say that this film is definitely worth a watch. It took a while for me to get into it, but once you familiarise yourself with the format, you find yourself drifting along with it until you are so hooked you can’t wait until the mystery is solved.

The basic plot summary for Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close would be that it follows the story of Oskar Schell (played by fifteen year old American Thomas Horn) and his quest to find the lock that a key he found in his father’s (Tom Hanks) closet will fit in. To add more detail to this plot summary, Oskar is somewhere on the Autistic spectrum, and his father died in the September 11^th disaster. Therefore upon discovering the name ‘Black’ on the envelope he found the key in, he writes a list of every person with that surname in the city of New York, and vows to speak to each one to try and solve the mystery in homage to his dad. As he does this, he takes photographs of each person and forms a scrapbook telling of his journey to solve the puzzle.

Along the way we learn of the relationships he has with various people, and this forms a pivotal role in the film. Oskar was very close to his father, who helped him to overcome certain fears that he had related to his autism, and encouraged him to be creative and knowledgeable by setting him adventures that they used to go on together. His grandmother seems to take over this role after his death, and there are a few emotional scenes where she is seen to be one of the only people who can relate to him as he struggles to get along with his mother (Sandra Bullock) when she fails to give him a plausible reason for why the World Trade Centre was attacked.

The first set of praises has to go to the outstanding cast, who all portray their characters with brilliant conviction and talent. Thomas Horn, considering this is his first role and he has never studied drama or acting before, provides a truly stellar performance. In particular, there is one scene approximately halfway through the picture where Oskar is explaining his plight so far to his grandmother’s lodger, a man voluntarily mute for over a decade, who we later discover is his grandfather. The heartfelt emotion and anger in the young actor’s face as he vents his frustration is simply beautiful to watch, and would put many more mature thespians to shame.

Another scene that was particularly poignant was when Oskar was explaining the things that make him ‘uneasy’ as he puts it. The film shows visual images of the list he says (examples are screaming, crying, people eating meat etc) sped up to be in time with his voice, which together with the actual noises of the objects, gradually reaches a crescendo to be broken by the bashing of a tambourine, the thing he uses to calm his nerves. This technique really added to the believability of the character’s condition, and showed how difficult and challenging living with Autism would be.

Overall, I don’t think I can give this film the justice it deserves in a short review. What I hope I have done though, is piqued your curiosity, and encouraged you to try and catch this movie at some point. It is complex yet interesting and sad yet heart-warming. Any piece of cinema that can do all that in 130 minutes deserves some credit. And watch out for Thomas Horn, I’d tip him to be the next teenage indie film star.