There will never be another movie that makes me as nervous to revisit it as much as Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close (2011). Despite its status as a Best Picture nominee, the popular notion is that it’s an awful, emotionally manipulative piece of tripe that trivializes the 9/11 events for sympathy. This is all stuff that I’ve discovered after seeing the film when I came out with an enthusiastic review that suggested that this was THE definitive take on that fateful day. For the first time, there was an understanding of how we felt on a granular level, specifically through the eyes of a child who otherwise has no way of processing things.
As I’ve grown older, I’ve figured out why that was my given reaction. To put it simply, my experience with 9/11 never felt resolved. I’m not talking about having any significant loss, but more that I personally didn’t see myself in any media about that day. It’s also because, in my personal life, I had just transferred to another school and had nobody with a relationship older than weeks to relate to. Nothing symbolizes it better than the fact that this happened the week of Back to School Night 2001, which was never rescheduled. Even my parents had no idea what was going on.
For me, there’s a whole sense of feeling alien from the event because I was 12. I didn’t have anything to compare it to and nobody in my immediate circles seemed all that different to me. Another odd detail that has only become more obvious in recent years is that I don’t see the protagonist Oskar Schell as annoying because, well, he has Asperger’s, which is a cousin of autism. I recognized aspects of him in myself, even if further thought suggests that, yes, he is also an annoying, cloying kid.
In the past few years, I have been coming to terms with my autism by exploring its representation in fiction. Among the books that I first turned to was this narrative by Jonathan Safran Foer. Foer claims that he had a more sprawling narrative that he was working on before deciding to focus on Oskar because he just had an interesting story. It was one that, on the surface, feels universal. Who wouldn’t connect to a story about a child feeling lost in the world? The novel is much more internal than the film, and it means that there’s as much brilliance as there is confoundedness.
Before I go further, I’ll just say that this isn’t my preferred narrative of a spectrum character. I greatly prefer Mark Haddon’s “The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Nighttime,” which feels more sincere while using similar territory.
Still, I get what makes the book a fascinating read. For me, I really like it because I’m someone who is grappling with a lot of personal in those pages. I’m trying to withdraw my own memories about 9/11 and try to understand why I feel removed. I’ve gotten closer to an answer, and I owe it to the general nature of literature’s ability to make the personal universal, making me empathize and even relate to perspectives that are not my own. Somewhere in Foer’s journey through New York, he finds a deeper understanding of 9/11 that may be the most provocative and touching version of events that I have ever read.
To be even more honest, Foer achieves this sometimes without a word. Oskar, a Francophile by nature, collects images and pictures that speak to him. The book pops with these inserts that are sometimes abstract, asking us what we see in these corners. They’re all in some ways a part of New York, but it’s sold as being profound because of Oskar’s vision. It starts with pictures he has of an unknown man falling from The World Trade Center, trying to understand who he was. Is that his dad? By the end, it becomes something more hopeful, but it explains his terrible anxiety and, like him, people falling to their deaths is one of the few concrete memories that I have of that day.
Though before I get into the whole story, I want to commend Foer on another abstraction. I have never seen something reflect a mental breakdown as vividly as he does over the course of several pages. It starts with rational thought before it slowly becomes paranoid. Soon words begin to overlap, but it’s still legible. However, layers and layers add until they’re this chaotic jumble that runs for several pages. You can’t tell what’s going on, and even if this runs for more pages than it should, the inescapable feel perfectly reflects an effort to make sense of a brain that’s over-stimulated. This is one of the rare times where style becomes substance. There’s never been a way that perfectly captures anxiety. As someone who loves to make fiction more of an interactive field, this book is a lot of fun and this may be its greatest achievement.
Then there’s the story itself. One of my biggest issues when writing young male characters is that they’re often sporadic in grossness. I understand that it’s part of the maturity process, but I definitely think it was bold of Foer to open his novel in such a way that it makes Oskar immediately insufferable, randomly jumping around thoughts that range from deep emotions before refracting to inventions and farting. He’s got a vivid imagination and makes you get the sense that he’s the kid behind you pushing your seat before giving you an interesting tidbit as a way to make peace. It won’t, but the story has an intentional mess to it that never leaves. If you can’t get on board with Oskar after 10 pages, then his emotional growth (which I promise is fulfilling by the end) will be largely lost to you. This is as much a story about 9/11 as it is coping with loss, and Oskar often does that by fantasizing sequences of violent outbursts. He beats up a kid during a school pageant, though it’s only in his head.
Which is a shame for those who find the wraparound device terrible, because once you get into the traction of the story, it’s strangely affecting. Oskar goes on a journey to understand what this key that his father left him opens. He is on a reconnaissance mission, and he talks to strangers with these vivid questions. There’s talk about everything under the sun, and it feels like an entryway into hundreds of micro-stories, of a city that changed permanently following that day. It’s one that allows us into these homes to hear heartbreaking stories of loss.
These could’ve been their own narratives, but would they be effective? That may be why Foer chose a wandering protagonist instead. Nobody is capable of fully understanding 9/11, and Foer is a big picture guy. He needs to get this in the broad strokes of a city that manages to feel reclusive even when it’s hustling and bustling. These conversations happen in apartment rooms, overlooking knickknacks that unlock further memories for Oskar to ask about. Not every story is about 9/11. Some are just intimate moments that capture something reminiscent, desiring to illuminate an emotional clarity that is better than outright commenting on the horrors of a recent tragedy.
It’s the type of story that suggests that while 9/11 was a terrible crisis, it’s not the first time that something has rattled someone. There have been events that go further back, reflecting early-20th century relationships that feel so sweet and lovely. Even amid this story’s heartache, there is this underlying lesson of trying to find ways to move on, to keep finding ways to make the future feel hopeful. Be grateful that you got to spend time with them at all. As much as Oskar lost a significant figure in his life, he still has a mother and a world around him that could help him grow and mature into something that’s otherwise normal.
On the one hand, it’s perceived as a jumbled mess, moving from his personal and immediate grief to a form of acceptance. It’s manic, often breaking into these forlorn letters of a man who became traumatized and stop speaking. He only communicates through messages, waiting for something that will make him feel better about the world. A part of him is irreparable, unable to be repaired. In that way, Oskar still has the potential to grow and not become a recluse, unable to connect with anyone except his family.
What do I see in Oskar that made me like this story? It isn’t just the sense of curiosity, which is portrayed in such a natural progression that it never becomes trite. He has the bad kids jokes, his optimism that comes through spurts of depression. He is confused about the world, and the writing perfectly reflects that. It’s not always straightforward, but it creates this therapeutic look into a perspective that isn’t often explored. I can’t speak to Foer’s accuracy with Asperger’s cognitive thinking, but the ideas have a prominence, that finds him able to escape through his own mental rubble and find ways to connect to others.
At the end of the day, that’s what makes “Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close” a particularly endearing book. It’s about finding meaning when nothing makes sense. For some, the uncertainty of death is an end. For others, it’s a turning point on a bigger journey. As much as this story doesn’t get to the heart of any specific events, it captures something that everyone alive faced on that day. What do you do when it feels like the world is going to collapse on top of you, that you’ll be alone forever, mired in hopelessness? That is when the overlapping text kicks in, and there’s no better way of describing the immense sadness Foer has built here.
Do I understand 9/11? I like to think that time has made certain details clearer, but the whole thing still feels clinical. Outside of key memories, I am left unsure of how to process these memories. I know that they’re sad and in my own way I was alone, but do I understand what life was like then? To be honest, Foer gets pretty close to getting an idea. He doesn’t pin it down in any single paragraph. He does it through something more invisible, expecting his audience to pick up on it from their own experience. Is it perfect? Not even close. Still, it creates something cathartic to those willing to look at everything and see something greater.
If you had to choose between the book and the film, I’d choose the book easily. To me, the film loses something taking away the abstraction that books can expand upon. It’s an internal struggle and one that makes words into feelings. Sometimes all it is is a font change or a color shift. Other times it takes looking at a picture and finding new meaning in something as mundane as a random woman standing still. It’s all so beautiful, reflective of a world that has so much to offer. It’s optimistic in such a way that you can overlook Oskar’s antagonistic nature at times and recognize why it feels odd.
He’s too young to understand everything around him. He comes close to certain breakthroughs, but these stories often come from people whose lives have passed by, who have moved on from grief. It’s bittersweet because they’re encouraging a kid to keep looking for the good in people. Another thing is that in the film, it’s less special because it’s something more familiar, at least in how it ploys key moments. There is no need to overlap text in a film. You need to see something external and interpret what’s inside. It doesn’t always work, at least I think. I still want to believe that it’s good, but something tells me that I haven’t lost sleep over this either. It’s probably a fine movie, but I worry that watching it will reveal how foolishly I was looking at myself at 22. Will I see that closure? Will it even make sense? I guess, for now anyway, I will let the mystery be for a little longer.
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