It’s a story about a boy. A boy who lost his dad in the World Trade Center collapse of Sept. 11, 2001. It is not a documentary, historical reenactment or overdramatic montage of what 9-year-old protagonist Oskar Schell calls “The Worst Day.” It is not a 9/11 tear-jerker. It is a more a sob-fest about general loss of family, which, regardless of how the tragedy happens, can rarely be definitively explained.
“Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close” is fantastic. It is based on the 2005 novel by Jonathan Safran Foer and directed by Stephen Daldry, and stars Teen Jeopardy champion and first-time actor Thomas Horn. Horn plays Oskar Schell, a New Yorker from the Upper West Side whose world is ripped apart by his father’s unexpected death. Played by Tom Hanks, father Thomas Schell was his son’s best friend. When he dies, a part of Oskar dies too. Left with a weak relationship with his mother, played by Sandra Bullock, and a confusion as to why bad things sometimes happen to good people, Oskar is alone; emotionally wounded and mentally distraught.
The movie begins in a dismal setting. Oskar opens with a daydream of skyscrapers. Underground skyscrapers. Eventually, we will have too many dead people, he says. And one day, there will be nowhere to bury all the bodies. We can build down, instead of up, he thinks aloud. There can be a whole underground world for the dead. Chills.
Oskar, who is introduced on his personal business card as an amateur inventor, Francophile, and pacifist, is broken after 9/11. He is a boy, boggled at the peculiarities of life, a child burdened with questions about life and death that no one can correctly answer. The most unanswerable of these questions comes when he steps into his dad’s closet for the first time after, a year after his death. While feeling around, he knocks over a blue vase with a little manila envelope. On the envelope is one word: Black. In it, a single gold key.
And this is where the story really begins. Oskar is convinced that his dorky dad left the mysterious key for him. Overwhelmed by grief and unable to move on in any other way, he sets off on a nearly impossible quest to find the lock that the key will open. After obtaining a phone book from his doorman, he maniacally fishes through everyone with the last name “Black.” There are more than 400 names, yet Oskar vows to visit them all. And so he does. He learns that everyone, be it The-Man-Who-Liked-To-Give-Hugs or The Renter, has a story to tell. Oskar changes the lives of most everyone he meets, all across the five boroughs of New York.  Along the way, he resolves the ripped bond with his mother and helps aid the relationship of his grandparents. And though his journey may not bring him exactly where he wants to go, it does partially release him from the overwhelming weight of being a boy without a dad.
I strongly recommend you see this movie. Actually, I strongly recommend you stop by a local drugstore, buy a large box of tissues and then go see this movie. A fair word of warning: You will leave upset. Not upset at the acting, the plot or the price of ticket. (Well, okay, maybe the latter a bit.) But judging by the absolute immobility of every single person in the theatre as the credits silently rolled on the black and white screen, this movie will take a cathartic toll on its viewers.
Oskar’s impossible expedition leads him to a philosophical understanding about life. Though he is afraid of most everything (bridges, trains, jackhammers, tall things, loud things and a majority of people terrify him), he understands that facing these internal horrors will bring him closer to his dad. And so, he jingles a tambourine — it keeps him calm —and spends the duration of the movie latently looking for the lock, while really looking for something he can never have back.
It’s almost shocking that Horn had, prior to this this film, never acted before. He plays the role with a dexterity that most actors three times his age have yet to achieve. There are several scenes in the movie that those with the faint of heart may not be able to sit through. Bullock is in the movie for exactly 24 minutes. But when she speaks to her husband moments before he dies, it becomes slightly impossible to sit calmly.  “You come home, right now,” Bullock says to him with a panicked tenacity that breaks your heart. Another is when Oskar describes, and forces us to listen to, the six voicemails left by his father before his untimely death. Though Oskar is home for three of his dad’s messages, he stands frozen, steadfast, unable to pick up the phone. He covers his ears with fragile hands. In the last voicemail, played appropriately in the last quarter of the movie, Oskar reveals his dad’s scared but direct plea to speak to his son. “Are you there? Are you there? Are you there…?” And then, as the first tower collapses to the ground, so does Oskar. And so do the heavy hearts of everyone watching from their seats.
“Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close” was one of nine films nominated for the Academy Award. It deserves the Oscar. It is haunting, inspiring and brave. It teaches the lesson of overcoming obstacles and finding that “sixth borough,” so to speak. And it does so through the eyes of a small boy. Sometimes death doesn’t make sense. This movie shines a message of light at the end of a painfully dark tunnel; a message of hope that is too often clouded by fears and disillusions. Maybe everybody is looking for something. But, as Oskar’s dad once says to him, “If things were easy to find, they wouldn’t be worth finding. Sometimes, we just have to face our fears.”