The catastrophe is a memory that human beings have to say and relive at any time. How to present a history that is difficult to face has always been controversial. Imagery is the best way, but there is an unbalanced "degree". Overly serious documentaries, to the greatest extent possible to restore the truth, but far from the audience, is a disguised obliteration of history. Turning the catastrophe into a commercial movie undoubtedly has the widest audience, and it has fallen into a voyeuristic carnival, where the disaster is consumed as a commodity.
For any film involving human disasters, conscientious producers are walking on thin ice. They must be entertaining to be easily accepted by ordinary audiences, but also serious and alert, so as to play the effect of "shadowing the truth" and arouse the viewer's deep thinking. . Even so, disaster films based on real history have always been unpopular, and those who are excellent such as "Schindler's List" are still subject to many criticisms. Therefore, it does not seem that it is particularly unimaginable that "Extremely Loud, Very Close" received boos from the American media.
Stephen Dedley's "The Reader" won the best Oscar, and "Extraordinarily Loud, Very Close" with the 9/11 incident as the background, the IMDB ranking is just over 6 points, and even received a bunch of bad reviews on Rotten Tomatoes. "Extraordinary Loud" was also nominated for the best this year, but the media treatment of "The Reader" is so different from the media treatment that "The Reader" is very different.
From the perspective of a boy, the movie tells the story of the traumatic heart after the catastrophe, and its keywords are destined to be tear-jerking words such as growth, warmth, and healing. The little boy took the lead, and the treasure hunt became the main form of the story, in order to find the legendary sixth district, and then to find the lock opened by the mysterious key. Searching for the key is a metaphor for how people face the unbearable past, how to forgive their powerlessness, and how to get out of the haze of sad memories after the disaster.
The emotional organs of the film are repeated over and over again, just like the six phone calls left messages, hitting people's hearts again and again, jerking people to tears. The father-son emotional drama is staged in series, which makes people mistakenly think that it is a pure "man" drama. Near the end, the peaks fall straight, and then there is a silently guarding maternal love drama. And the little male protagonist interacts with all kinds of people in the process of searching, which also shows the fraternity theme of the film "Love in the World".
The superb acting skills of many veteran actors naturally add color to the film. Sandra, Tom Hanks and Max von Sydow, any one of them is a well-known figure. Sandra is easy to put in and out, Marx lifts his weight lightly, and the actor Tang, who has not shown much, is also full of aura. Everything looks wonderful, but the problem lies with the key character, the little male protagonist who connects the whole scene.
In a movie about disasters and the soul, what do you expect from a young actor, not to mention his monologue is eloquent, and his back almost fills the entire movie? As an ordinary movie fan, I am not qualified to raise the standard, but fortunately I can express my impressions: the casting of the little male protagonist was a failure. Child stars are less restrained in temperament, have little acting experience, and have too many traces of emotional outbursts and emotional transformations. He's obviously more suitable for mindless movies like Home Alone or Agent Alone. In this play, as soon as he appeared, tears turned into laughs. How can people get into the play?
It may be more interesting to assume that the boy can't speak (the autistic person is best) and the old man is talkative. But it is also more dramatic, and it treats disasters as entertainment.
Americans' dissatisfaction with this film is not mainly to blame the performance, but that the director is a British! Even with a rigorous and solemn attitude, disasters can't be announced casually, and it depends on who the narrator is. In the eyes of Americans, Dedley, as an "outsider", has neither experienced nor qualified to tell about the pain and suffering of 9/11. It is normal for them not to have a good face for this film.
Narrative ethics are so complicated that telling a story well is not easy. As an outsider who has no real pain in 911, although I don't think the movie is a good work (the influence of the little male protagonist), it is also a good deed to remind people that there was a man-made disaster ten years ago. Americans say that outsiders don’t understand the spirit of 9/11. If it really does, I think of the “Friends” that was already so good-looking and decided to reluctantly continue their jokes for another year in order to comfort Uncle Sam, then this spirit is probably: Unspeakable , I can't say...
(The American media's evaluation of the film's information comes from the Chinese network, so it is not rigorous, and the English-blind people are ashamed.)
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