Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close (film)

In August 2010, it was reported that director Stephen Daldry and producer Scott Rudin had been working on a film adaptation of the novel for five years.[6] Eric Roth was hired to write the script.[7] Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close is a co-production with Paramount Pictures and Warner Bros., with Warner being the "lead studio".[6] Chris Menges served as director of photography, K. K. Barrett as production designer and Ann Roth as costume designer.[8]

Tom Hanks and Sandra Bullock were the first to be cast in the film.[9] A nationwide search for child actors between the ages of 9 and 13 began in late October 2010 for the role of Oskar Schell.[10] Thomas Horn, who had won over $30,000 at age 12[11] on the 2010 Jeopardy! Kids Week, was chosen for the role in December 2010.[12] Horn had had no prior acting interest but was approached by the producers based on his quiz-show appearance.[11] On January 3, 2011 The Hollywood Reporter announced that John Goodman joined the cast.[13] Nico Muhly was credited in the film poster as the composer, but on October 21, 2011 it was reported that Alexandre Desplat was chosen to compose the score.[14] Similarly, James Gandolfini was credited on the initial poster, and was originally in the film as a love interest for Bullock's character. Test audiences reacted negatively to their scenes together, and he was cut.[15] Austrian actress Senta Berger was offered a role in the film, but declined.[16]

Daldry stated in an interview that the film is about "a special child who is somewhere on the autistic spectrum, trying to find his own logic – trying to make sense of something that literally doesn’t make sense to him."[17] When asked how much research was necessary to realistically portray a character with such a condition, he answered "we did a lot of research," and that he "spent a lot of time with different experts of Asperger’s and talked to them."[17] In the film, Oskar reveals that he was tested for Asperger syndrome, but the results were inconclusive.[17][18] As Daldry explained: "Every child is different on the autistic spectrum, so we created our own version of a child that was in some way – not heavily, but somewhere on that spectrum in terms of the fears and the phobias."[17] There are no references to autism in the novel.[18] Author Jonathan Safran Foer stated in an interview that he had never thought of Oskar as autistic, but added, "Which is not to say he isn't – it's really up for readers to decide. It's not to say that plenty of descriptions of him wouldn't be fitting, only that I didn't have them in mind at the time."[18]

Principal photography was expected to begin in January,[10] but started in March 2011.[8] Filming went on hiatus in June.[19] On May 16, 2011, scenes were shot on the streets of the Lower East Side and Chinatown. Cranes were used to shoot scenes on the corner of Orchard Street and Grand Street.[20] Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close was filmed with an Arri Alexa and was the first Hollywood feature film to use Arri's ArriRaw format to store the data for post-production.[21] Several scenes for the film were shot in Central Park, a location that is integral to the storyline, near The Lake and Wollman Rink.[22] The Seaport Jewelry Exchange on Fulton St. was used for a pivotal scene in the film when the son is searching through a jewelry store and its back room.

The film was released in Blu-ray,[4] DVD, and digital download formats in Region 1 on March 27, 2012.[5]

Review aggregation website Rotten Tomatoes reported a 45% approval rating and an average rating of 5.60/10 based on 191 reviews. The website's consensus reads, "Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close has a story worth telling, but it deserves better than the treacly and pretentious treatment director Stephen Daldry gives it."[26] Metacritic, which assigns a weighted average score out of 100 to reviews from mainstream critics, gives the film a score of 46 based on 41 reviews.[27] Audiences polled by CinemaScore gave the film an average grade of "A-" on an A+ to F scale.[28]

Critics were sharply divided about the subject matter of the film. Betsy Sharkey of the Los Angeles Times wrote that the film was a "handsomely polished, thoughtfully wrapped Hollywood production about the national tragedy of 9/11 that seems to have forever redefined words like 'unthinkable,' 'unforgivable,' 'catastrophic'."[29] Andrea Peyser of the New York Post called it "Extremely, incredibly exploitive" and a "quest for emotional blackmail, cheap thrills and a naked ploy for an Oscar."[30] Peter Howell of the Toronto Star gave the film one out of four stars, saying that "[the] film feels all wrong on every level, mistaking precociousness for perceptiveness and catastrophe for a cuddling session. It's calculated as Oscar bait, but the bait is poisoned by opportunism and feigned sensitivity".[31]

Before the film's release, Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close was expected to be a major contender at the 84th Academy Awards (Stephen Daldry's previous two films had garnered Best Picture nominations). However, due to the film's polarizing reception and being ignored by most of the critics groups' awards – namely, the Golden Globes, the BAFTAs, and the Screen Actors Guild Awards – it was no longer deemed a major contender.[33] Nevertheless, the film was nominated for Best Picture and Max von Sydow for Best Supporting Actor. Critics and audiences criticized the film's nomination for Best Picture, with some calling the film one of the worst Best Picture nominees ever.[34] Chris Krapek of The Huffington Post wrote very negatively about the film's nomination, calling the film "not only the worst reviewed Best Picture nominee of the last 10 years, [but] easily the worst film of 2011".[35] Paste Magazine's Adam Vitcavage called the film's consensus for a Best Picture nominee "certainly the worst for at least 28 years",[36] and David Gritten of The Telegraph called the nomination "mysterious".[37]

Many critics have blamed the new Best Picture rules for the nomination. John Young at Entertainment Weekly said that, when it comes to the new rules, "it's better to be loved by a small and passionate group instead of liked by a much larger group",[38] and Jen Chaney at The Washington Post believes that "the Academy should've just stuck to the 10 rule so that films like Dragon Tattoo or Harry Potter could've joined the other worthy contenders, because if you're going to create a bunch of drama around the number of nominees and then come up one shy of what has become the typical total, that just feels like a letdown."[39] The Week wrote that the new rules are a failure, as it lets "smaller, divisive movies that the Academy had hoped to weed out, like Tree of Life and Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close, in, but prevents critically-praised crowd pleasers like Bridesmaids and The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo from being nominated."[40]

On the other hand, awards pundit Tom O'Neil defended the nomination and the film, stating: "This is a movie that we unwisely wrote off, but we did it because we believed the critics. This movie delivers. It is a superb motion picture. It is moving, it is relevant to our time, it is extremely well made."[41]

At the 84th Academy Awards, Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close lost in both of its categories (Best Picture to The Artist and Best Supporting Actor to Christopher Plummer for Beginners).