Play trailer Adventure Drama Mystery. Director Stephen Daldry. Eric Roth screenplay Jonathan Safran Foer novel. Top credits Director Stephen Daldry. See more at IMDbPro. Trailer Promo Dutch Trailer. Spanish Trailer. German Trailer. French Trailer. Swedish Trailer. UK Trailer. Photos Top cast Edit. Dennis Hearn Minister as Minister. Caleb Reynolds Schoolboy as Schoolboy. Stephen Daldry.
More like this. Watch options. Storyline Edit. 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? They are now safely out of my hands. Its twelve separate discs no longer have to worry about me yelling obscenities at them extremely loudly.
They need not be concerned that they get thrown again at the passenger side door, incredibly closely. So go away Jonathan Safran Foer. Stop your sobbing.
I was crying just to get you, now I'm dying cause I let you -- do what you do down on me. Or not. You are cheesy and you annoy me. So take your forced cuteness and your vegan cupcakes and go home.
Aug 05, Bart rated it did not like it Recommends it for: No one at all. To read Pynchon is to witness genius at its most joyless. A mind capable of inventing myriad things and compelled to record them all. But at least Pynchon showed genius. What Jonathan Safran Foer shows, however, is mere gimmickry. Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close takes readers who thought they might have seen a glimmer of greatness in Everything is Illuminated and convinces them all they really saw were special effects.
Everything is Illuminated began in such an original way that a reader forgave the or so dull pages of less-than-compelling writing that came along throughout the rest of the book. The reader forgave the puerile reflections on the Holocaust and the manufactured confession of homosexuality. Because the book began so originally. But Foer is a one-trick pony. To indulge himself with a hundred irritating digressions and quips, Foer invented a child narrator. This has become more and more common among the hyper-realism set in the last 10 years.
But this is not serious art. This is an author who makes the easy choice every time. Tolstoy took a large subject and made it larger. Foer takes a large subject and makes it tiny. View all 38 comments. Aug 01, Andy rated it did not like it Recommends it for: Pseudo-intellectuals, people suckered by saccharine emotion.
A more apt title would have been Terribly Artificial and Unbearably Pretentious. This seems like the kind of thing I would have thought was a profound idea when I myself was nine, laboring on crayon illustrations to include with my manuscript into the wee hours of the morning. Maybe that means Foer succeeded.
I happen to think it means his efforts were an abject failure, and that he has a great many readers and critics completely snowed. With a book like this, you either accept it as charming wis A more apt title would have been Terribly Artificial and Unbearably Pretentious. This story is never once believable; therefore any emotion generated is as phony as a three-dollar bill. This is a book for a self-important Attention-Deficit society.
But for those of us who think each word matters, this practice is annoying subterfuge, and ultimately meaningless. View all 19 comments. I make jewellery I know!
You have to wonder why no one has killed me since I must drive people insane with my maximum cuteness. Oh, and have shortwave radio conversations with my grandma over in another desirable residence in the Upper West Side.
I have empathy for every living thing including you. My brain is just naturally like Pixar HD. You may be wondering how I got to be like I am. My grandfather, frinstance. Is that a word? It is now. Do you like plays? Do you like it when you can hear something before you can see it?
View all 57 comments. Jun 04, emma rated it it was amazing Shelves: recommend , owned , school , literary-fiction , 5-stars , reread , reviewed , beautifully-written , non-ya.
Very genuine and emotional and generally gross. I love Jonathan Safran Foer. I love him even though chances seem high that he is quite pretentious have you read that New York Times piece made up of email correspondence between Natalie Portman and himself? I love him even though absolutely the only thing I care to know about him is his writing. The flaws of his books - characters and scenes that can border on the fantastical, a pervasive feeling of try-hard-iness to coin a word - are so easily overlooked.
Not even, actually. I fell and fall so deeply in love with his writing that these things seem like positives too. I like that our main character, Oskar Schell, feels a tad too big and vibrant for the world.
It makes me love him harder, experience his too-big feelings more. I love, love, love his quest through the city to meet everyone he can with the last name Black. I like the sometimes-eye-rolly ways that the author plays with formatting and perspective and language. It wraps me up more. Bottom line: I like all the things that make this book beautiful and completely one of a kind. Even the over-the-top things. View all 8 comments. Today while tutoring, I've met with one student right at 1 and another at 4.
Perhaps that was not the smartest thing to do Sometimes I find the book so funny that I laugh out loud. Which is fine if I had a quiet laugh, but I don't. And I tutor in a common meeting space which is a center room with offices surrounding it.
Clearly, everyone in the office knew I was getting paid to laugh at what I was reading. I felt bad; if I was Today while tutoring, I've met with one student right at 1 and another at 4. I felt bad; if I was working, I wouldn't want to hear someone who was getting paid to read laughing. In my defense, at least everyone could see that writing matters to me and I appreciate quality literature, which further proves my already-established qualifications as a tutor.
But then I got to the climax of the book, and I was moved by how the climax was written because it felt so "real" to me, because it captured how I feel and think if those things could be replicated in language other than poetry , and I loved the characters as I love my families, and I loved the twist in the plot and how it came together in a way I didn't think it would come together because I was being skeptical and I thought it would be more trite, so I'm reading in the middle of this common room but I wouldn't call it reading as much as I would call it immersing myself into the novel when I start crying.
Once the tears got in the way of my reading, I looked away from the page to wipe them, and realized I wasn't at home. I was in the Student-Athletics Department. I was tutoring. I had to pull my shit together. What I love is that a book could do that to me. That it could inspire me--to write, to live, to not be afraid, to not be embarrassed when I bawl at work. I love this book so much I'm going to buy a copy of it. I would marry it if I wasn't married to FD.
I want to put Kiedrowski's frosting on it and eat it. I love the multi-genre-ness of it. It's brave and out-there and absolutely gorgeous. I still have one chapter left. Once I started crying, I thought maybe I should wait until I was home to finish it--just in case I need to sob for a couple of minutes or hours.
It's moments like these that make me happy to be a reader, and even more so a writer I didn't cry. I didn't sob. I just finished it while BBQ-ing tonight's dinner Chicken, roasted potatoes, and broccoli , ate dinner while watching the newest Deadliest Catch, cleaned-up, and talked to Pops. What's funny is, though, all the while I was doing this business, I was thinking about this book. And I have a feeling I'm going to think about this book for a long while.
Like when I see a great film that moves me, it sticks with me, such as Dancer in the Dark. Because without God how could such a great book come into existence? Or such a great author who is able to write such a great book? And then such a great mind? And the food such a great mind eats? And the air such a great mind breathes? You probably can see where this is going. I can't review this book like other books.
Mostly because I'm too emotional right now. But I can say if you read this blog, you should this book, if you haven't already. Dre and Snoop would be up on this shit! For the first time ever and maybe only time ever View all 11 comments. An Abuse of Childhood Traumatic tragedy makes good newspaper copy, especially when it involves children. The combination of horror and sentiment seems irresistible.
But does it really serve for good fiction? I have my doubts, at least in the case of Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close. My psychological connection with Foer An Abuse of Childhood Traumatic tragedy makes good newspaper copy, especially when it involves children. My name is Black, a family name which gives the book its dramatic trajectory. Secondly, at the age of nine, I too like Oskar experienced the trauma of an air disaster when a military bomber crashed into the house next door to my suburban home, killing the three crew members in front of me.
None of this history occurred to me until I was halfway through the book, suggesting perhaps that the historical facts might be more tightly bound with their emotional residue than I had ever realized. After the crash I recall feeling very distinctly that I knew much more about it than the adults did despite their maturity.
There had been three other similar incidents during the previous year; and one only a few months later that I witnessed from some distance.
The nearby Air Force facility was a hive of Cold War pilot training. The aircraft were all WWII bombers and transports. And the crews were part time reservists. So not perhaps the most experienced flyers in the service, in equipment long past its retirement date - what could go wrong? We lived under the approach path for the main runway. I was acutely aware of the Doppler sound of every plane in the sky and literally held my breath until those I knew were landing passed overhead. The weekends were worst, when there was a continuous stream of touch and go landings for the Flying Boxcars, vehicles as antiquated as their name suggested, well into the night.
I did not succeed. I didn't want to, but I couldn't stop. At some point the fear attenuated or was sufficiently repressed to allow a reasonably normal life. The event itself is news. The cause of the event is documentary rapportage. The consequences of the event are where fiction is necessary. Strict rationality succumbs to emotional necessity.
There is no cause and effect only complex interactions of unresolved suffering. This arises from the event itself, and from all the other tragic events that persist in memory and physical conditions. There is an ecology of tragedy which links them. But he feels compelled to continue the task. Death gives us a reason for searching, if for nothing else for its meaning. Not having something to search for is worse than death. Death in its own way provides hope.
If I read Foer correctly, this is his theme, and a rather interesting one. Oskar, in addition to his trauma, is somewhat autistic.
This gives him an aura of vulnerability. But he is also highly articulate and charming, traits which carry the narrative along with considerable wit and even humor. The problem is that the two characters are contradictory even if Foer tries to smooth over the joins. Oskar moves in and out of these two personas, even jumping into a third occasionally as a juvenile sage, who advises the various failing adults.
This choice of an immature protagonist is, I think, a mistake. It does create a story that sells but not a believable character. Children, no matter how clever they are, do not think and act like Oskar like planning an carrying out an exhumation! Children are hopeful by instinct; they are instinctive searchers. It is adults who have to be reminded that searching is the essence of living.
Oskar is, in short, a fantasy not a fictional character, an abuse of childhood, but an instructive one. Recommended to Lawyer by: A suggestion for group read by goodreads group Literary Exploration.
Shelves: , fathers-and-sons , childhood , psychology , loss , death , sisters , childhood-vicarious-trauma , mothers-and-sons , grandmothers-and-grandsons. Extremely Loud and Incredbily Close: Jonathan Foer's novel of love, loss, and memory There are events that leave an indelible stamp on us for a great portion of our lives.
This happens from generation to generation. Ask those living at the time of the attack on Pearl Harbor where they were and what they were doing, they will be able to tell you the answer.
Similarly, ask me where I was when I heard John F. Kennedy was shot, I can tell you. I had arrived at work at the District Attorney's Office. My chief side kick with whom I was working prep for a trial, ran into the grand jury room and said turn on the television.
I did. What I saw was something I could not accept. Jonathan Foer goes far past the point of remembrance. Foer drops you into the shoes of 8 year old Oskar Schell. It is an event he lives daily because he lost his father that day. And the event is brought home to him, for he has a cell phone with his father's messages sent from the twin towers that day.
This is a secret he keeps from his mother, for he wants to protect her from the pain of those messages. It is an incredible burden for a child to bear. Oskar is left with a gamut of guilt and fears, resulting in a state of vicarious traumatic response to his father's death. His grief is all the more palpable because he is extremely gifted and incredibly cursed with an intelligence far more gifted than children his age. Oskar shared a bond with his father, who fostered that intelligence, by devoting great attention on his son, gently lulling him to sleep at nights by reading him the New York Times and circling the errors they found in red ink.
His father challenged Oskar's intelligence by setting up questions for Oskar to solve, leaving clues amounting to a trail of breadcrumbs leading him to a solution of the problems he designed for him. Or did he? Did his father actually do this? Or is this something which Oskar has perceived in his mind alone?
The action of this novel occurs a year after the fall of the Towers. Oskar is still dealing with the traumatization of his father's loss. In an effort to keep the memory of his father close, Oskar frequently hides in his father's closet where the scent of his father's shaving still lingers in his mind, if only in his mind. A bundle of memories and his fears cripple Oskar in his dealings with others, especially his schoolmates, whom are not affected by the fall of the Towers as Oskar is.
Nor does Oskar perceive his mother to be as deeply affected by the loss of his father. She has a new friend, Ron, who becomes a frequent visitor to the apartment. Oskar hears their laughter in the living room, as he hides in his father's closet. At one point, typical of a child, he tells his mother he wishes it had been her who died that day. It is something a child would say, intentionally hurting the remaining parent, then immediately struck with the hurt he inflicted on his mother whom he loved without question.
There are strong clues that while Oskar is undoubtedly a prodigy of intelligence far beyond his years, that Oskar just might suffer from more than childhood fears.
Is it that Oskar is afflicted by Asperger's Syndrome? A look into the Diagnostic Services Manual--I believe we're in the fifth edition of that psychological cookbook, now, reveals that this is a distinct possibility.
Oskar is enveloped in a net of pattern and design, a characteristic shared by children with this diagnosis. He is awkward in his social interactions. Nor does he seem to grasp the results of his actions in social settings.
Play on words which Oskar finds hilarious are lost and misunderstood by those around him. It is a matter of degree, not an exclusion from that diagnosis. That Oskar is unaware of the consequences of his behavior on his teacher and his fellow students is clear. In graphic detail, he explains the results of the bombing of Hiroshima, sharing a video interview with a survivor of the first use of an atomic bomb against a civilian population. That Osckar's last name is Schell is a clever device used to great benefit by Foer.
For Oskar is a veritable Chambered Nautilus consisting of impenetrable chambers of secrets revealed only by gently bisecting the shell of a nautilus. Oskar's mother carries her son to be counseled by Doctor Fein, who is anything but fine in his ability to reach Oskar and release him from all the fears held within him, brought about from his father's death.
It is only through Oskar's discovery of one last mystery he believes was left him by his father to solve, that Oskar begins to live outside himself and become engaged with people outside his immediate family that just might allow him to move forward from the prison of the loss of his father. Quite by accident, Oskar spies a blue vase on the top shelf of his father's closet.
Stacking his works of Shakespeare in his father's closet, Oskar stretches to reach the vase, only to tip it off the shelf, shattering it on the floor of the closet. It contains a key, with an envelope. Written on the envelope is the word "Black" written in red ink.
Oskar determines that the answer to his father's last mystery is the key and someone named Black. Although the number of locks in New York City is mind shattering, Oskar, a child of the internet, decides to track down all the Blacks in New York City in an effort to find the secret of what the key opens.
It is this journey, if anything, that will allow Oskar to move beyond the death of his father and live his own life. Foer, in a display of brilliance, introduces us to Oskar's grandmother and the grandfather, Oskar never knew. Thomas Schell, for whom Oskar's father was named, also is trapped within the memories of another terrible incident in Human history, the firebombing of Dresden. The elder Thomas, although once capable of speech, can no longer speak a word, but communicates by writing in blank day books.
He disappeared before the birth of Oskar's father. We learn of the elder Thomas's history through his letters to his unborn child and through his life with Oskar's grandmother, who lives in an apartment building across the street from Oskar.
Oskar and his grandmother communicate by walkie talkies at all times of the day and night. It is through the writings of the elder Thomas Schell that we experience first hand the horror of living through one of the great acts of inhumanity against man--the fire bombing of Dresden during World War II by the Royal Airforce and the United States 8th Airforce from February th, Those events leave Thomas Schell a man forever changed.
The beauty of Foer's novel is the answer he provides in the resolution of Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close. We recover from the tragedies of our lives through the bonds we share with others. This is the ultimate beauty of life. While some critics, and some readers, find Foer's novel, manipulative and cloyingly sweet, I find it an affirmation of life. To paraphrase Faulkner's Nobel Acceptance Speech, it is through reaching out to others that not only are we able to endure, it is the way we prevail.
This is a solid 6 Stars literary masterpiece. If it makes you cry, take joy for the fact Foer reminds us we are human, not only capable of acts of inhumanity, but also capable of acts of great love and forgiveness. View all 35 comments. Explore a character analysis of Oskar Schell , plot summary , and important quotes. Read our full plot summary and analysis of Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close , scene by scene break-downs, and more.
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