Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close Review

Plot Summary:
Oskar (Thomas Horn), an autistic child whose father (Tom Hanks) was killed in the 9/11 attacks, finds a key in his father's closet. Thinking the key leads to a message his father left behind, he searches around the city looking for the key. On his adventure, he conquers his fears, makes remarkable discoveries and ultimately learns to deal with his loss.

The Positives:
Many people consider this film to be the surprise Best Picture nominee at this year's Oscars. With hardly any awards talk about it and many mixed reviews floating around the internet about it, I'll admit I did not quite know what to expect out of this film and curiosity sparked on how this film could be nominated for such a prestigious award. After seeing this film, I am here to tell you to avoid the negative criticism for this film, it is a really good movie.

The main thing I really enjoyed about this film was the brilliant performances the ensemble gave here. Thomas Horn, who was a Jeopardy! contestant before this film, gives one of 2011's best child performances here. He was given a very difficult task to portray an autistic child, a performance if done wrong could be both offensive and laughable. But with Horn's innocence and intelligence, he gives this performance justice, he portrays the benefits and disadvantages of autism extremely well. At times he is mean and could be considered unlikeable, but it is emotions that guide him and Horn portrays this wonderfully. He deserves great work after this film. Sandra Bullock, who plays his disconnected mother, gives a great performance here too, she shows grieving in a very realistic manner rather than a fake way. However, the best performance here is Max von Sydow, who steals the show with a silent performance. The facial and body gestures he gives make his performance remarkable and well worth watching.

Another thing I really enjoyed about this film was the artistic style it showed. Rather than taking the pretentious route most art films take, the artistic choices help the film tell the story in a better way. The cinematography is beautiful, it shows New York City in a colorful and lively way, rather than a grim, scary place most films take this place to nowadays. I really commend the editing choices here, I feel it portrays the emotions and the thoughts of Oskar beautifully. The editing here shows us the story through the eyes of an autistic child, which I felt they did a really good job on. I think the Academy snubbed a few nominations for this film: direction and editing.

The writing here is really intelligent and thoughtful. The advanced vocabulary Oskar uses once again portrays autism very well. The way he interacts with the other characters in this film really show this as well. The film is also funny at times, the humor is well-placed for a film with a strong topic like this one.

The Negatives:
I enjoyed this film for the most part, but I did have a few issues with it. I felt that the film tried too hard to manipulate the audience into feeling emotion at certain scenes. Some of the scenes I felt were just put in there to burst the audience into tears. The writing is somewhat to blame here, I feel if they worked on making the emotions more realistic rather than forced.

Another issue here is how they used 9/11 in this film. I understand that 9/11 is a part of the story, but I feel that using 9/11 in a plot like this was a little unnecessary. I feel the story is great, but I think I would have enjoyed it more if 9/11 wasn't used as a plot device. Once again I feel that through this plot device, the audience is manipulated into emotion rather than actually feeling it.

Conclusion:
Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close is an extremely underrated film. I honestly do not understand the negative criticism for this film and I probably never will. Despite its flaws, this is a very well-done film with strong performances, a strong story and a unique artistic style. This is very worthy of the recent Best Picture nomination and I feel more people should check this out.

Rating: 8 out of 10