Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close

Top 25 Films of 2012: 25-21

Posted on by bernardovillela

I try to keep my mind as open as possible during the year and as you start assembling a list like this you see there could be perceived slights. The fact of the matter is making this list was brutal. More than once I had to consider if I can stick to a previously made proclamation, more than once I jotted down additional titles to see if they could slide into the top 25.

T25. Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close & Jeremy Fink and the Meaning of Life

Look, I’m not a big fan of calling ties in lists to fudge in an extra title but it’s justified here. I’ll get to why. However, I also didn’t want to throw a bone out of an honorable mention with little to no discussion of that title. Secondly, yes, Extremely Loud was nominated for an Oscar last year but I was nowhere near where it played for it’s Oscar-Qulaifying run so I only saw it when it opened wide in January.

Ok, so why a tie? Both these films deal with children who have lost their father, live in New York City and are on a mysterious journey to find an answer to a riddle their father seemingly left them. The biggest difference between the two is that in Jeremy Fink there’s not a whiff of 9/11. There are smaller ones but that’s the key. I wrote ad nauseum about my feelings on 9/11 and this film, and if forced to only pick one I’d take Extremely Loud, but that one has the fanfare and might bother you, and the other one is a smaller film, which you should not judge by its cover that’s worth a look if you like the essence of the tale and want that one element excised.

24. Lincoln

Lincoln (2012, DreamWorks)

The introductory paragraph talks about all the decisions made in this list but Lincoln particularly came to mind when writing it. To call something the 24th best film of the year sounds like a snide remark, until you consider how good the year was, the film in question and ultimately how malleable the list could be. I initially described Lincoln as a line drive for Spielberg. It’s a baseball phrase meaning he’s got a hit on his hands, extrapolating that it also refers to the constantpace of the film. The cloistered nature of the film, the political nature, the drama; are all great, but not as transcendent as some. I fully believe Spielberg got what he desired here and he was aiming for something very different list-making ultimately comes down to splitting hairs and this is where this one fell – no slight against it though.

23. Ted

I wrote about the pop of Ted and the significance that can have beyond mere identification, but what I didn’t note is that this film just works. What makes it funny and endearing is that it’s wish-fulfillment taken to comedic extremes. As kids we all wish certain things, the teddy bear one has particular pull for me, but don’t consider every eventuality. This film does that and the comedic trappings and pitfalls of the the arrested development that ensues make it great. To call it an overblown Family Guy episode would be to do it injustice because what MacFarlane and crew do here is what they can’t always do on the show, but the sensibilities and touches are there.

22. Boy

Where Boy really succeeds is in developing its characters. As I wrote about in the review, it’s really a story about accepting one’s family as is and the struggle to reach that point. The fact that it takes place in a Maori community makes it of interest to me (as I have seen good films in a similar milieu before) but the plight of the father to reconcile with his sons, and their search for acceptance and to forgive him his wrongs, are what make this film universal.

21. The Raid: Redemption

The Raid: Redemption (2011, Sony Pictures Classics)

Virtually the only mistake one can associate with this film is the indecipherable subtitle the distributor slapped on it. However, as I have argued about many a film, most notably Halloween III, “who cares what you call it? ‘cus I call it great.” I’ll readily admit things in the martial arts or action genres rarely achieve such heights for me, and my patience with them is typically thin. The story of the film has more to it than people give it credit for but the cinematography, score and fight choreography are really what make this film click as well as it does. It’s a great adrenaline rush.

Everybody’s Got Stories: Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close and My 9/11

Posted on by bernardovillela

Thomas Horn and Tom Hanks in Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close (Warner Bros.)

I worked in 1 World Trade Center from 1999 to 2001- to September 11th, 2001 to be precise. My story about that day isn’t all that dramatic really. There are details I could divulge but suffice it to say I wasn’t on the schedule for Tuesday mornings that month. So I was not on either the 106th or 107th floor on that day, nowhere close, thank God. I thought about taking that shift when the proposed schedule came out but decided against picking up an occasional AM shift. I was juggling college and the job and Tuesday was an off day from classes and I decided to use that to rest.

Of course, we all know what happened that day and since then I’ve been fairly quiet about a number of topics that pertain to the day itself. I’ve also had varying reactions to works of art which have dealt with the attacks.

I am writing this, of course, because Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close is due out soon and it’s been lambasted by some as exploitative among other things. I have yet to see the film so I cannot defend its artistic merit, however, we should look at other depictions of 9/11. One other caveat: so unimaginable and unpredictable were the attacks to me that while working there I wrote a post-apocalyptic script wherein a family eventually lived in the World Trade Center.

First, there is the tandem of fairly fact-based films World Trade Center and United 93. Neither of these films interest me in the least. I have, more times than I care to, been able to imagine, only imagine but what more can one do, what those floors looked like that day. Having worked there I get a much clearer picture than I care to so I needn’t see any dramatization thereof. The films may be fine and as propaganda-free as possible but I just have no interest. To me those smack more of exploitation for it takes actual people and focuses on the event and tried to feed on rampant patriotism to generate box office. Some see it otherwise and that’s fine but as I said I have no reason to see it.

Remember Me, which I wouldn’t have seen anyway, was your standard father-son drama and decided to use 9/11 as a twist ending rather infamously and in classless fashion.

On the flip-side Stephen King in his collection of short stories Just After Sunset deals with the tragic day in New York in two different ways. In “The Things They Left Behind” he deals with the aftermath and those lost but in “Graduation Afternoon” it comes in at the end, in the distance. It does not inundate all that preceded it and change the entire story and feel like a blatant, in-your-face exploitation. It is there, it is stunning and it affects all, but it does not compromise the tonality of the entire piece.

In Brian K. Vaughn’s brilliant comics series Ex Machina the first issue concludes with a newly-minted superhero’s biggest failure, the fact that he only saved one of the two towers. Considering the tone of the series was serious, political and a very post-9/11 story it all fit.

So the last three I enjoyed so I can take in a tale of fiction which cites something that so closely affected me. Yet it seems this film gets quite a bit of vitriol just in the “How dare you?” realm. The question of “How should art deal with 9/11?” is a valid one but it seems that was never asked for the two that try to most closely replicate it. Bastardized truthiness does not a documentary make and what function is being served there? Those are movies about 9/11 but in a bright piece of marketing Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close is being labeled as being about every day after. In some ways those days were harder.

Furthermore, the word art is formed from the word artifice. It is about subterfuge. Exactitude is what a documentarian strives for but even they know there’s a gray area.

This film reminds me of some of the reading I did about Kapó before I decided to buy it. The film features perhaps the most over-analyzed shot in film history of an inmate dying in a concentration camp. It raised questions of morality in film, however, what should be moral about film? Absolute morality eliminates myriad genres. Horror is where we imagine out nightmares to try an exorcise them and horrid, immoral things are imagined and inflicted upon the people that populate those stories. What need have we of narrative morality?

Not to compare disparate tragedies but surely there was a time when the holocaust was an untouched topic. However, through the years different narrative avenues about events in and around World War II have been found, some not universally embraced, Stephen Daldry’s (the director of this very film) The Reader comes to mind.

The fact of the matter is there are events in world history that defy logical explanation and easy categorization. However, that does not stop us as human beings from exploring them and one of our biggest means of exploring is through the arts. Some say “Why make this film?” I say “Why not?”