Oskar Schell is nine years old, autistic, and carrying a key he believes was left for him by his father. That key drives the whole of Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close, a 2011 drama directed by Stephen Daldry and written by Eric Roth, adapted from Jonathan Safran Foer’s novel. It is a film about grief, memory, and the impossible task of finding meaning in loss. It is also a film that spends nearly two hours trying to make a scavenger hunt feel like a tragedy, and mostly failing.
Tom Hanks plays Thomas Schell, the father whose death sets everything in motion. Sandra Bullock plays Linda Schell, the mother who watches her son fall apart. Thomas Horn plays Oskar, making his film debut, and he is the reason anyone watches past the first ten minutes. Viola Davis, John Goodman, Jeffrey Wright, and Zoe Caldwell round out a cast that gets less to do than the story promises.
The film opens on September 11, 2001, with Oskar arriving home early from school to find six answering machine messages from his father at the World Trade Center. He hides under his bed while his grandmother stays until Linda returns. A year later, he finds a key in his father’s room, wrapped in an envelope with the word “Black” on it. He believes it is a clue from his father, and he sets out to find the lock it fits by visiting every Black listed in the New York phone book.
Trailer, via Rotten Tomatoes Trailers.
Oskar’s Key
The key is the film’s engine. Oskar visits 472 Blacks, lying to his mother about where he goes. Each encounter gets photographed and recorded in a scrapbook. The film wants Oskar’s quest to be a metaphor for grief, a way of processing what happened to his father. What it actually delivers is a boy wandering the city for months, knocking on doors, and talking to people who rarely help him get closer to the truth.
Abby Black is a woman starting a divorce. The reclusive renter communicates only through tattoos on his hands and a writing pad. Viola Davis and John Goodman get small roles that feel like they were cut down from larger parts. Zoe Caldwell appears briefly as Oskar’s grandmother, a character who should have more weight than the film gives her. Thomas Horn does his best with a thin script. He is watchful, anxious, and sometimes funny in a way the film does not know what to do with. His performance is the reason the film holds together at all. Bullock is warmer than usual, playing a mother who cannot understand her son’s need to move. Hanks is quieter, giving Thomas Schell a presence that mostly comes through in flashbacks rather than in the present-day scenes.
Scavenger Hunt Problem
The problem with Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close is that the scavenger hunt is not a tragedy. It is a series of meetings with strangers that add up to nothing. Oskar visits people named Black across the city, and none of them know his father. The film wants the emptiness of these visits to feel profound, but it just feels like busywork. There is no mystery to solve, no discovery to make, and no resolution that feels earned. The key is a device, and the film treats it as one, sending Oskar from one dead end to the next without ever building toward a payoff.
Empty Casket
The film’s strongest scene comes early, at the funeral. Oskar is angry because the casket is empty. He cannot make sense of his father’s death, and the film understands that moment better than it understands anything else. That scene is brief, and it is gone before the film moves on to its long middle section of visits and recordings. The rest of the film never reaches that height again.
Oscar Controversy
Despite mixed reviews, the film was nominated for two Academy Awards. Best Picture and Best Supporting Actor for Max von Sydow, who plays the reclusive renter. That nomination sparked controversy, since von Sydow barely registers as a presence in a film that gives him almost nothing to do.
Quiet Failure
Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close is a quiet failure. It is a film about a boy looking for answers that never arrive, and it cannot disguise that emptiness with style or sentiment. The performances are competent, especially Horn’s, but the script is too thin and the structure is too loose to carry the weight of what it is trying to say. It is a film about grief that never fully commits to what grief actually looks like, preferring instead to wander through a city full of strangers who cannot help.
Key Facts Box
– Director: Stephen Daldry
– Writer: Eric Roth
– Runtime: 129 minutes
– Genre: Drama
– Tagline: “This is not a story about September 11th, it’s a story about every day after.”
– Nominations: Best Picture, Best Supporting Actor (Max von Sydow)
The film was released in limited release on December 25, 2011, and went wide on January 20, 2012. It grossed over $55 million. That number is modest for a film with this cast, and it reflects a movie that audiences could see but not recommend. Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close is a sincere attempt to capture something difficult, but it is a sincere attempt that never finds its center. The key is a symbol, and the film never learns to read it.
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