What is it to be obsessed/obsessive? Is it synonymous with egoism? Clearly not in so many causes as it has more to do with the object rather than the id. And indeed can be either a force for good or ill? I think we all really wanted to like Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close (Stephen 'Billy Elliot' Daldry's) new film about a kid dealing (or not) with the trauma of losing his dad in the 9/11 Twin Towers collapse. But the film engenders anger rather than consolation/hope/imagination. Should the source novel be read? I almost did but at the end of the day thought better of it. A film becomes its own entity. And don't get me wrong. It is very much a film worth seeing if only to discover why so many people are still so very angry about 9/11. Not so much the event. The loss. But about the verboten unspoken. It's worth the ticket price alone to see Max von Sydow's silent performance - an entire film in itself: the 'renter' of the boy's aunt's apartment who lives across the street and who Oskar walkie-talkie's.
The 'renter' lived through an even greater trauma - that of the Dresden bombing and the holocaust. And my instinct tells me that Mr. Daldry made (inadvertently) a great film about not being able to make a sublime film that kissed the horrible flaws of what could have been THAT movie. We know Sandra Bullock and Tom Hanks can ACT (as they exhibit here as ever consummately) and that they're constantly ridiculed for sorta not ever being considered as real actors. But they are so peripheral to this movie whose real star is Oskar Schell (Thomas Horn). And probably Mr. Daldry's great skill is in directing young talent/artists. But we sense that Oskar is screaming. Mr Daldry puts the kid on cinematic Prozac instead! Should he have gone further with the adults? It's difficult to say. But you almost feel that Sydow dared Mr. Daldry to force him to speak and that that dare was never taken up.
So much was unsaid about 9/11. To the extent that the prevailing winds couldn't even admit that loyal American citizens could possibly consider jumping out of a window in the face of adverse horror. To the point where film makers were demanded by government to erase images of 'the towers' from their movies to avoid...ahhhh...ummmm what exactly? If that's your starting point you have one helluva a climb to the pinnacle of any truth whatsoever. Does Oskar have Asperger's Syndrome or, moreover, does everybody else in their desperate longing to hug and 'reach out' to this child. Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close attempts magic but plumets whimsy. And that makes one angry. How dare you tell me to move on, reach out to me when you've never experienced THAT kind of loss. It makes Oskar furious to the point where he 'steals' the answaphone with his Dad's last messages an places it with a facsimile machine so his Mum (nor anyone else but him) will ever hear them. And the child has finally convinced himself (rightly or wrongly) that the 'you' in that final message relates solely to him. And as we seethe with fury at how his Dad has been told to trust in the 'stay where you are and all will be fine' advise messages. Oskar will see/find the 'missing borough' of Manhattan on the far off hillside (that so oft his Dad mischievously had wafted about his child), traversed the valley, and summitted the mountain only to find that the golden windows of escape were a refection of whence he'd travelled.
In many ways Roman Polanski's Carnage (adapted from Yasmina Reza's play) is a far superior film in depicting the underbelly of Manhattan and yet in so many ways insubstantial compared to Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close's soul of seeking enlightenment. It is very funny and very incredibly too close for comfort. The parents of two kids meet at one of their abodes (ultimately disintegrating) after the event of one 'sprog' assaulting the other in a playground. If either parents are anything to go by, the kids had little or none of the sense of life's wonder that Oskar's dad had instilled in him. For all Extremely Loud's frenetic New York actualite, Polanski's studio recreation of those denizen's inner lives breathes a far truer spark.
It's not easy to enjoy Bruno Dumont's films. But if one perseveres, you do feel as if you've touched the hand of some higher power. The real 'reaching out'. Twentysomething Céline (Julie Sokolowski) escaped the bourgeois claustrophobia of her parents, became Hadewijch (after a C13th mystic poet) in a nunnery but was so self-obsessed and devout that she was ostracised back to normality. A kindred spirit to Oskar in many ways in that they both think they see the light but it is merely a reflection of their own obsession. Céline attends a discussion group on “the notion of the invisible” incrementally magnetised to the 'boys' of a Islam group. Sokolowski's face is inescapable on the screen almost succeeding in convincing you that there is something irresistibly beyond. What results is somewhat of a profound understanding of how easy fundamentalism is incubated. Céline is more than a moth around a flame: she succumbs to the gravitational pull of her own reflection. The polar opposite of Simone Weil's philosophical writings/teachings of Gravity and Grace whereby one must empty oneself of the ego to be drawn to the centrifugal light.
