Despite its overweening literary pretensions, “Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close’’ is about as artistically profound as those framed 3-D photos of the Twin Towers emblazoned with “Never Forget’’ that are still for sale in Times Square a decade after 9/11.
Does anyone actually buy these things and put them in their den? How many people who turned Jonathan Safran Foer’s twee and gimmicky exploitation of this tragedy into a best seller actually made it past 20 or 30 pages? It certainly was an effort for me.
This adaptation from director Stephen Daldry (who turned “The Reader’’ into what amounted to Nazi porn) features a pair of beloved, Oscar-winning actors (Tom Hanks and Sandra Bullock) insupporting roles.
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But it still views this disaster through the cracked lens of an annoyingly precocious 11-year-old whose beloved dad perished after jumping or falling from one of the burning towers.
That this awful event is treated “artistically’’ during the opening credits — we only see a pair of feet tumbling through the air — makes it no easier to stomach. Nor is the burial of an empty casket representing the missing remains of the deceased father (Hanks, who is seen in a number of flashbacks).
The film is oppressively dominated by the brilliant but socially maladroit son — who, it’s strongly hinted, is a high-functioning autistic with Aspberger’s syndrome. Thomas Horn, a former “Jeopardy!’’ Kids Week champion with no previous acting experience, gives arguably one of the most obnoxious child performances in Hollywood history as young Oskar.
A year after 9/11, Oskar wanders into his father’s untouched closet and finds a mysterious key in an envelope inside a vase.
Oskar decides that finding the lock the key fits in will bring him closer to his dead dad, a jeweler who loved devising elaborate treasure hunts for the son (it’s the obverse of “Hugo,’’ where the young protagonist seeks a key for the same reason).
Our hero’s only clue is “Black’’ written on the envelope. So he decides to devote his weekends to visiting all 217 households in the city listed in phone books — hadn’t 11-year-olds switched to the Internet by 2001? — under this surname.
We’re led to believe that, initially, Oskar undertakes this journey — armed only with a backpack containing an Israeli gas mask and a tambourine — to the most photogenic corners of all five boroughs, alone and unsupervised by his mother (Bullock).
Eventually, Oskar is joined in his journeys by an old man, known only as “The Renter’’ (Max von Sydow), who lives in the neighboring apartment of his paternal grandmother (Zoe Caldwell).
It’s rather easy to guess the actual identity of the old gent, who is mute and communicates with Oskar through notes and his upraised palms, on which “yes’’ and “no’’ are tattooed.
Alone and with The Renter, Oskar meets a series of colorfully stereotypical New Yorkers, who almost always dispense hugs and share their own stories of losses, which Oskar collects in a pop-up book.
Only a pair of these strangers are developed — a divorcing couple named Black played by Viola Davis (“The Help’’) and Jeffrey Wright (“Source Code’’). It’s sad that two of the best actors working in films today are saddled with one of the weariest tropes — African-Americans who exist pretty much exclusively to help a white protagonist.
All the while, director Daldry and his screenwriter Eric Roth (“Forrest Gump,’’ “The Curious Case of Benjamin Button’’) are shamelessly milking a secret that Oskar has kept from his mother: Dad left a series of increasingly harrowing phone messages on their home answering machine on 9/11.
I was unavoidably moved when Oskar finally plays them for The Renter, who is anguished, horrified and writes Oskar notes begging him to stop.
But the final revelations between Oskar and his mother feel as phony and contrived as the rest of this movie — which thankfully excises a Holocaust subplot from Foer’s novel for reasons that have less to do with taste than casting.
In the end, “Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close’’ pulls out all the stops trying to put the audience through the emotional wringer. It’s Oscar-mongering of the most blunt and reprehensible sort.