Review of Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close (2011) by Sam F — 27 Sep 2012

The acting in this movie is impressive, and the story does have a function: by drawing us back to the people who went thru this "extreme, life interrupted, ordeal/loss" it gives the viewer a lot of time to feel in that zone, thus progressing the healing process for those who watch it.

Much has been made of the somewhat fanciful story not being able to approach the reality of the suffering that occurred because of those events, but the story is an allegory - it tracks the basic processes of healing; that is, somehow (because that's how God works it) there is at first rejection of the reality, the unpleasant inescapable living with the reality day after day, the increase in activity that comes along and gets one's mind off the fact, the incoming love that heals, the unexplainable healing effect of time, and then the resolution and the going on. God resolves the feelings at the right time, so that something that one sometimes knows is impossible for one to resolve, is at some point, resolved - this process corresponds to outer events of course, and the story line reflects that accurately enough.