Unless I am Extremely Dim & Incredibly Thick, which is always a possibility — you think I don’t know? I do — this Stephen Daldry adaptation of Jonathan Safran Foer’s 2005 novel Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close just doesn’t seen to have any point, and is sentimental and banal as well as very, very long (or so it seemed). It may have worked as a book — I can’t say; I never read it — but as a film it’s a trial.
Why has it been Oscar-nominated in the Best Picture category? No idea, although I would suggest it caters to America’s idea of itself as a nation that can triumph over anything, including 9/11, and to the notion that all scars can always be healed, which I’m thinking is patently trite nonsense. Would you make a film about the Holocaust in this spirit, for example? Could you? Would you want to? I think these are reasonable questions although, being Extremely Dim & Incredibly Thick, it may, of course, strike you as otherwise.
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