The film, directed by Stephen Daldry and adapted by Eric Roth from Jonathan Safran Foer's iconic 2005 novel, has been almost universally panned. It has a 45% approval rating on Rotten Tomatoes and The Guardian even asked whether it was the worst Best Picture nomination ever. I think this harsh criticism is at least in part inspired by the Oscar nod: if it were not up for the award, I doubt people would have reacted with such vitriol, but rather indifference. After all, judged on its own merits, it's alright. I was very ready to hate it after seeing the trailer - and knowing the book - but it was fine. Yes it's shmaltzy, over-sentimental and contrived but I didn't have an urge to give up on it at any point during the two-and-a-bit hours, I very much liked Max von Sydow and I thought Oskar's meetings with the various Blacks were well executed.
However, I absolutely loved the book. I read it all in about 8 hours, not wanting to put it down. Adapting Extremely Loud... was always going to be a very difficult part, as much of its magic relies on how it is put on paper. The book is a mixture of Oskar's streams of consciousness, letters he writes and receives, letters his family write, photographs, newspaper clippings, things his mute grandfather writes in his daybooks to communicate with people, and even tester papers from a stationary store. As you can see below, the layout of the book tries to imitate the way the characters write (in this case the grandfather trying to fit as many words as possible on his rapidly dwindling paper - part of the fun is trying to read these palimpsests). The film was never going to be able to recreate this, but the annoying thing is that it didn't even try to create a similar feeling with innovative filming or montage techniques, instead giving us a very mundane film.
The worst sin of the film-makers though, in my opinion, was the complete sanitation and Hollywoodising of the story. What really caught my attention in the novel was how Oskar's grandparents' lives were changed forever by the bombing in Dresden. By almost completely ignoring this crucial part of the story, the film-makers have not only removed a very relevant comparison with Oskar's current situation (perhaps in was thought that 9/11 is incomparable?) but also gave me the impression that they believed it wasn't proper to consider the suffering of Germans at the hands of the Allies. This is, after all, an extremely patriotic film. Scenes at the Twin Towers have been added in and there is much more focus on the courage of those there. I'm not saying this is a bad thing, it just doesn't leave much room for considering that others have suffered too.
It's not just the Dresden bombings that were erased, but the complex adult relationships. In the book, Oskar is angry that his mother is spending time with another man, but in the film Sandra Bullock remains a devoted, grieving widow. I got the impression that the film-makers thought it wasn't appropriate for her to move on so quickly, or even to seek solace with company. Yet it is the relationship between Oskar's grandparents that is most sorely missed. The delicate balance of remembering and forgetting, supporting each other and causing each other pain was for me the most captivating part of the book, a sensitive examination of a very real relationship. I was very disappointed to see it gone. Moreover, much criticism of both the film and the novel has been that the young protagonist Oskar is 'extremely pretentious and incredibly irritating', which I agree with, but in the book it's not so much of a problem as there are lots of other characters who are far more engaging. In the film, on the other hand, it's all on Oskar and he does grate on you. However, while it would have been very easy to put a man in with Oskar's mother, doing justice to the complexities of Oskar's grandparents would have required much more time than this already long film could offer, so maybe I should just accept that the film could never have been a full recreation of the book, and take it for what it is? After all, we're always told in class not to reduce the question to 'The book is better and that's that', but to look at what we can learn from how the film has been adapted. In this case, I think we can mainly learn a lot about attitudes to 9/11.
Talking of class, I was very surprised to find a link between Extremely Loud... and the latest of my course books, Gunter Grass' The Tin Drum. I read Extremely Loud... only a few weeks before The Tin Drum but the obvious intertextuality didn't occur to me until I stumbled across an article called The Extremely Loud Tin Drum. Then suddenly it was so clear: two Oskars, one with a drum, the other with a tambourine, both finding comfort in their grandmothers... The filmic Oskar Schell even had a striking resemblance to Oskar Matzerath, with the piercing Bronski blue eyes.
I take this as a clue to the intentions behind Extremely Loud... The Tin Drum became known as the great novel of the twentieth century for its vivid and over-arching descriptions of the rise of Nazism, WWII and ensuing capitalist era. Although on a much smaller scale, Extremely Loud... aims to continue this portrayal of major world events through the eyes of a child, from WWII to 9/11, focusing on the devastating personal consequences. If only Oskar Schell had been half as complex, witty and engaging as Oskar Matzerath.
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