Film: Nine-Elevened into Submission
Remember that stunning final shot in Billy Elliot? The title character, now a professional ballet dancer, leaps off the ground, and through the magic of film, is momentarily frozen in midair as director Stephen Daldry dissolves to a glimpse of a preteen Billy jumping in bed, the very image that opened the film. Past and present coexist for one blissful, genuinely uplifting second.
Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close, Daldry’s adaptation of Jonathan Safran Foer’s 9/11-themed 2005 novel, also opens with a character stuck in suspended animation, only this time the context couldn’t be more different. The blurry, bespectacled face barely comes into focus, just enough to realize we’re watching Tom Hanks falling to his death. From one of the World Trade Center towers. In slow motion.
It’s the first of many, many lapses in taste that Daldry inflicts on his audience. From a director for whom subtlety has always been an alien word, ELIC shows the heavy-handed dramatist behind The Hours and The Reader hitting rock bottom. The worst part? The darn thing’s too dreary to qualify as a fun train wreck.
A sorely miscast Hanks plays Jewish jeweler Thomas Schell, but this isn’t the (fictional) 9/11 casualty’s story. What about Schell’s wife Linda, portrayed by a frumpy-looking Sandra Bullock? Nope. ELIC belongs to their son Oskar, a precocious, Asperger syndrome-afflicted ball of sunshine played with considerable skill by newcomer Thomas Horn. The plot kicks into gear when Oskar, several months after “the worst day,” sneaks into his dad’s closet and accidentally drops a vase which, naturally, shatters into a hundred stylishly lit pieces. In slow motion. Oskar grabs a tiny envelope simply labeled “Black.” Inside is a key. It’s Thomas, you see. He’s reaching out from beyond the grave to give his son one last adventure in the tradition of those geocatching expeditions on which they often embarked.
What lock does this mystery key open? Oskar’s determined to find out, so off he goes to visit every New York City resident with the last name Black in the phone book. He hits the pavement, his map and trusty tambourine by his side, because where would a character like Oskar be without endearing eccentricities? This kid’s neuroses and nervous tics make Dustin Hoffman in Rain Man seem like the epitome of austerity.
But wait, there’s more! Oskar finds an unlikely expedition buddy in his grandmother’s lodger, an octogenarian immigrant from the old country. He understands English perfectly, mind you, but psychological trauma has rendered him mute. As played by Max von Sydow, he’s by far the most interesting player in Daldry’s overblown misfire, as well as the only cast member who emerges from the debacle with his dignity intact, though his pained expression throughout the film leads me to believe he’s probably thinking something like, “I used to work for Ingmar Bergman. Bergman!” (Other big names dragged down into the allegorical mud: John Goodman, Jeffrey Wright and current Oscar nominee Viola Davis. James Gandolfini is probably thanking his lucky stars that his performance was left on the cutting room floor.) Admittedly, Bullock has one powerful flashback scene where she talks to her husband on the phone right before the buildings crumble. The fact that Special Ed is nowhere in sight might explain why this moment resonates in a way the rest of the film’s histrionics fail to leave an impression. Other than utter repulsion.
It would be unfair, though, to place the blame squarely on Horn’s frail shoulders. He displays much promise in a very demanding role, though from his appearance on recent award shows, he’s even more insufferable out of character. (He’s so damn chipper it makes my head spin.) The bottom line is that this project should have never been given to Daldry. It probably doesn’t help that screenwriting duties went to Eric Roth (Forrest Gump), who’s covered this quest-for-Meaning territory far too often in his body of work. Foer’s prose requires a light touch when translating it to the screen, and even though it’s far from perfect, Liev Schreiber’s whimsical take on Everything Is Illuminated captured the author’s gossamer sensibility with a disarming generosity of spirit that ultimately quelled the voice inside my head that kept saying “Good G-d, is this precious” like a broken record.
The movie version of ELIC needed someone like Sofia Coppola or Spike Jonze to ground its flights of fancy in something resembling the real world, but we’re stuck with Daldry, who reaches the nadir of his overproduced brand of fake uplift. The film will inevitably have its defenders, probably the same people who thought Paul Greengrass’ vital docudrama United 93 took a national tragedy as the basis for an extended episode of 24. Extremely Loud, they might argue, is more easily digestible, a triumph of the human spirit that shows how one individual can turn personal loss into a catalyst for community outreach. Poppycock. You can almost feel Daldry’s mini suction cups milking unearned tears from your eyes. He reduces 9/11 grief to a singularly annoying boy’s quest to overcome his fear of…getting on a swing? (Talk about trivial pursuit!) Fans of Pay It Forward and Seven Pounds now have a new relentless manipulation machine to champion. The rest of us can see this weapon of mass destruction for the unholy atrocity that it is.
In telling another Big Apple-based story, Roman Polanski assumes a less-is-more approach that couldn’t be further removed from Daldry’s sensory overload. Carnage has been adapted from Yasmina Reza’s play “God of Carnage,” and the Oscar-winning director has wisely resisted the temptation to open up the text for the screen. The setting is an upscale apartment where two sets of parents meet to resolve a nasty schoolyard scuffle between their teenage sons. But what starts out as a cordial invitation by Penelope (Jodie Foster) and Michael Longstreet(John C. Reilly) to start a productive dialogue with Nancy (Kate Winslet) and her yuppie-scum hubby (Inglourious Basterds‘ Christoph Waltz) gradually devolves into a battle of egos peppered with random displays of too much information and, in an inspired flourish, projectile vomiting.
At 79 minutes, Carnage doesn’t overstay its welcome, but it also feels too often like an actor’s workshop, albeit an exceptionally well-crafted one involving A-list stars. You feel the director pulling his punches when he should have gone for the throat with more gusto. It’s minor Polanski, but it’s fair to say a slight work from one of cinema’s masters beats most of the crap that’s playing in the dumping ground that is January at the movies. See it with your in-laws and watch them squirm in their seats.
Carnage continues a limited run at Regal Cinemas South Beach and AMC Theatres Sunset Place. If you missed Nicolas Winding Refn’s Drive when it came out in theaters last fall, now’s your chance to catch up. The brooding genre piece returns to local screens this weekend at the Miami Beach Cinematheque (mbcinema.com). It would have been #11 if I’d made a top 20 list of 2011 movies. In addition, David Cronenberg’s Sigmund Freud/Carl Jung potboiler A Dangerous Method, which I reviewed two weeks ago, finally arrives in South Florida on Friday. It’s well worth seeking out, even if it’s just to see Michael Fassbender spanking Keira Knightley. That same day, Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close unleashes its aggressively engineered brand of post-9/11 bridge-building. Don’t say I didn’t warn you.
