Oskar Schell: I started with a simple problem… a key with no lock… and I designed a system I thought fit the problem. I broke everything down in the smallest parts… and tried to think of each person as a number… in a gigantic equation.
But it wasn’t working… because people aren’t like numbers. They’re more like letters… and those letters want to become stories… and dad said that stories need to be shared.
I had anticipated a six minute visit with each person named “Black”… but they were never just six minutes. Everyone took more time than I had planned for… to try and comfort me and make me feel better about my dad… and to tell me their stories. But I didn’t want to feel better and I didn’t want friends… I just wanted the lock. I wasn’t getting any closer to my dad… I was losing him.
Director:
Producer:
Cast:
Tom Hanks as Thomas Schell
Sandra Bullock as Linda Schell
Thomas Horn as Oskar Schell
Max von Sydow as The Renter
Viola Davis as Abby Black
John Goodman as Stan the Doorman
Jeffrey Wright as William Black
Zoe Caldwell as Oskar’s grandmother
Hazelle Goodman as Hazelle Black
Music:
Based on “Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close” by Jonathan Safran Foer
Story:
A troubled young boy, Oskar, is trying to cope with the loss of his father. Oskar starts lashing out at his mother and the world. Until a year later, he discovers a mysterious key in his father’s belongings and embarks on a scavenger hunt to find the matching lock, just as he used to when his father was alive. On this journey he is bound to meet a lot of people and learn a lot about himself and his family, but will he ever find the lock?
Review:
From the start, “Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close” is an engaging movie, with a beautiful story of a boy in search for closure a year after the death of his father in 9/11. He does thus by searching for a a lock in which the key fits. The kid, Oskar, clearly has Aspergers Syndrome, though its not mentioned in the movie. This movie kinda reminds me of ‘The Curious Incident of The Don in Night-Time’ which is also about a boy with Aspergers in search for some thing.
The movie is beautiful and sentimental. I especially liked Max von Sydow‘s character as the mysterious renter of the apartment. His role of writing notes in the book and showing it to Oskar, engages the audience to pay attention to the movie. Max really deserved the oscar for his role. It must have been hard for one person not to speak through out the movie. Which also reminds me of Touch (TV Show) where the kid doesn’t speak…
What I didn’t understand is why they put the names of Sandra Bullock and Tom Hanks on the poster. They were hardly there in the movie.
Final Verdict:
Galactica 