JACK'S BACK and this time it's personal!
DATE AND STATUS: Sunday, September 9th, 2012 and I'm stitch less!
DATE AND STATUS: Sunday, September 9th, 2012 and I'm stitch less!
AND I QUOTE SOPHOCLES: "These are the best of words if they are honest."
The good doctor, (actually, he's the best doctor in the world) says that my rowing will not be feasible for at least another two weeks, but at least, we are headed in the right direction. But, thank goodness I no longer have to endure getting stitches out.
I know what you're thinking, having stitches removed is no big deal, and, ordinarily, I would agree with you. But, MY SKIN has become so sensitized from all the medication and steroids I take for my asthma that the slightest touching of it, and this is no exaggeration, sends me into excruciating pain and suffering.
I try not to take out my misery on Mac, (which is hard, when he is at the root of my pain,) he has only been treating my injury, at least when it was over, I thanked him properly, which was only good manners.
Sometimes, when someone has inflicted pain on me, I forget my manners! I temporarily forget that they were not intentionally bringing me pain, it was just an unfortunate drawback of my treatment. Anyway, onto happier things!
Once again we can rejoice, the clouds have lifted, the wind has blown yesterday's storm away; it is a perfectly gorgeous fall day, (except for the fact that it still is technically summer,) and one feels happy to be alive.
The sky is blue, there's not a cloud in the sky, (well, there wasn't,) the air is crisp, and everything is fresher-God really has given us one of his most excellent days. Lucky, lucky ALL OF US!
If you're getting today's post later than usual, that is completely my fault. I slept in, and when I did finally awake at eight o'clock, I just laid there in bed, luxuriating in my comfort, and appreciating the amazing view of the lake from my bedroom window.
Lake Nipissing really is beautiful, and I'm so blessed that for almost six months of the year, I get to live here on our little island, and keep the rest of the world at bay.
Our travel plans to New York City are coming along, we have hit a bump or two, but nothing so complicated that it can't be worked out. Santosh Kalwar said "Every problem comes with a baggage of solutions." How true, how very, very true.
It is great to be busy, again. It makes me feel that I'm more in sync with the rest of the world who go off to work each day. I'm back to work too, except I don't get paid for it.
There are rewards other than financial ones to make one's job worthwhile, and the joy I get from writing far supersedes my taking home a pay cheque.
Please do not misunderstand me, it would be nice to get paid for my writing, but, unfortunately, CROWN PUBLISHERS, KNOPF, NOR THE GLOBE AND MAIL, realize what they're missing!
Whenever I think I have a way with words, and think I'm witty, I look to the literary works of some of my heroes, "Mark Twain," "Shakespeare" and "Cicero.", who could really say something, and say it well!
Perusing their quotes and readings, and others that range "from the sublime to the ridiculous," which in itself is a quote from Shakespeare!) never fails to keep me grounded!
Having to watch a new film every day, and then get out my post which reviews that movie, cuts down on my tendency to "veg out." I simply don't have time to procrastinate.!
Consequently, I've missed watching some really good movies that have been available for viewing on the Turner Classic Movie (TCM) channel. However, there was one movie, "EXTREMELY LOUD AND INCREDIBLY CLOSE," I didn't miss, even though it wasn't featured on TCM.
"EXTREMELY LOUD AND INCREDIBLY CLOSE" begins with a body that seems to be falling from the sky, alluding to jumpers from the twin towers on September eleventh (9/11).
Oskar Schell (played convincingly well by Thomas Horn,) is introduced as the German American son of Thomas Schell (Tom Hanks) who died during the attack.
In a flashback sequence, Thomas and Oskar play a scavenger hunt to find objects throughout New York City. The game requires communication with other people and is not easy: "if things were easy to find, they wouldn't be worth finding".
Oskar is let out of school early on September 11th, and while his mother Linda, (Sandra Bullock) is at work, Oskar gets home, and finds five messages from his father on the answering machine saying he is in the World Trade Center.
When his father calls for the sixth time, Oskar hears the phone ringing, but is too scared to answer it. The machine is recording a message, that suddenly stops when the building collapses, and Oskar knows his father has been killed. He replaces the answering machine so his mother will never find out
Later, and after a few weeks have passed Oskar calls and confides in his German Grandmother (Zoe Caldwell,) about "the worst day", and they become closer. Oskar's relationship with his mother worsens when she cannot explain why the twin towers were attacked and why his father died.
Oskar tells his mother he wishes it had been her in the building, not his father, and she responds, "So do I!" Later, Oskar tries to take it back and says he did not mean it, but his mother tells him he did.
A year later, Oskar finds a vase in his father's closet with a key in an envelope with the word "Black" on it. Oskar is determined to find what the key fits, and searches in the New York phone books to find 472 Blacks listed. Oskar plans to meet each of the Blacks to see if they knew his father.
Woven through all the moments, Oskar's very specific journey unfolds, the memories of his past guiding an uncertain future, with Horn narrating much of what's running through his mind.
Oskar is a naturally anxious boy, with Asberger's syndrome. Oskar is fearful in ways his father had tried to help mitigate with intricate explorations of the city, a search for the mysteriously missing sixth borough of New York City chief among them.
That search of the key becomes the engine that drives the rest of the film. This also becomes the movie's treatise on healing as it takes Oskar into the homes of the traumatized nation of ordinary people, some coping, others not.
Oskar sets out on foot, because one of his peculiarities is that he won't use public transportation. What do we learn during Oskar's quest? That more than 4,000 may have died in the 9/11 terrorism, but millions more still live? That those named Black form a cross-section of the metropolis? That life goes on?
That he is able to undertake this task while apparently keeping it a secret from his mother is a tribute to his intelligence. That he thinks it's safe for an 11-year-old to walk alone all over New York is not.
Abby Black (Viola Davis,) is the first Black, (no pun intended,) that Oskar meets. Oskar's social skills don't extend to noticing that Abby is in the middle of a marital crisis with her husband (Jeffrey Wright.)
Davis and Wright are so good here, in roles that work mostly by implication, that Oskar's quest starts off on the right foot emotionally. Eventually, Abby tells Oskar she did not know his father.
Oskar is not entirely alone. He is seen off by his building's doorman, (John Goodman,) and soon he makes a new friend. This very old man, known only as the renter (Max Von Sydow) has moved in with Oskar's grandmother.
The Renter cannot or will not speak, communicating only with written notes, but he is a tall and reassuring companion. As they become friends and go together on the hunt to find what the key fits, Oskar learns facing his fears, such as those of public transport and bridges. Oskar concludes that the stranger is his Grandfather.
Oskar plays the answering machine messages for the stranger. Before playing the last message, the stranger cannot bear listening any longer, and stops Oskar. Later on, the stranger moves out and tells Oskar not to search anymore.
When Oskar looks at a newspaper clipping his father gave him, he finds a circled phone number. He dials the number and reaches Abby, who wants to take Oskar to her ex-husband, William, who may know about the key.
William tells Oskar he has been looking for the key. William had sold the vase to Oskar's father who never knew the key was in the vase. The key fits a safe deposit box where William's father left something for him. Disappointed that the key does not belong to him, Oskar goes home.
Oskar's mother tells Oskar she knew he was contacting the Blacks. She visited each Black in advance and informed them that Oskar was going to visit and why. Oskar makes a scrapbook of his scavenger hunt and all the people he met and titles it "Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close."
At the end of the scrapbook there is an animation where the body is falling up instead of down.
Oskar's grandfather returns to live with Oskar's grandmother.
EXTREMELY LOUD AND INCREDIBLY CLOSE began unsettling with scraps of paper fluttering like confetti from a skyscraper, smoke billowing out of its windows, a man falling, even more unsettling were the shots of the polyglot of humanity that is New York hurrying down the sidewalk, wearing fear, worry, confusion in every line of their suddenly lined faces.
In Oskar's case it's the loss not only of a father, but his best friend. In Hanks' hands, Thomas is kind, funny, clever and fascinated by his son. He also becomes the film's primary source of comfort. It seems a smart choice to put two quintessentially heartland stars in Tom Hanks and Sandra Bullock at its center. It makes acceptance easier, offense harder.
If Thomas Horn is the film's diamond in the rough, channeling Oskar's sorrowing and searching, yearning and regretting, Max Von Sydow is its buried treasure. He's the film's enigma with a past so shadowy and troubled, he has chosen not to speak, though his shrugs and sighs and outstretched palm "yes" tattooed on one, "no" on the other telegraph volumes.
The boy and the old man, both damaged, both trying to make amends for past mistakes, become the film's point-counterpoint on coping.
Given its polarizing subject and this much raw emotion, the film is probably destined to be divisive. Some will be bothered by the sentiment, others won't believe it goes far enough or deep enough, still others will resent the movie for even trying to examine the wound.
There are certainly big, capital-letter themes explored here: Death. Sorrow. Forgiveness. Reconciliation. Stephen Daldry does somewhat bring it all down to a human level. "EXTREMELY LOUD & INCREDIBLY CLOSE" won't be the last cinematic word on 9/11, but it proves to be a memorable one.
Ultimately, and sadly, the plot is contrivance and folderol. The mysterious key, the silent old man a magical tambourine are the stuff of fairy tales, and the notion of a boy, (no matter how intelligent,) walking all over New York is so preposterous we're constantly aware of it as a storytelling device.
Well it may be folderol and contrivance but it sounds like a worthy film and I plan to take it in soon, fairy tale or not.
ReplyDelete