Oskar Schell
(Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close)
On paper, Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close seems like a film that could say something meaningful about 9/11. It’s about a kid named Oskar, who has high-functioning Asperger’s and loses his father when the Twin Towers fall. Instead, the production is brazenly manipulative, leaning on contrived plot points and cutesy dialogue. By the end, the movie feels closer to a fairy tale than a realistic drama. At the heart of the problem is Oskar. For one, the director Stephen Daldry decided to cast Thomas Horn, someone with literally no previous acting experience, after seeing Horn compete in Kids Jeopardy. (No, I am not making that up.) It’s hard enough to expect a child actor to perform well under normal circumstances, but to ask someone with zero experience to portray Asperger’s and be emotional distraught about 9/11? It was doomed from the start. What we get is a main character who comes across as arrogant and pretentious, which is hugely destructive to the emotional tone, since the audience is supposed to sympathize with Oskar — not feel like their intelligence is under attack.