Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close

This blog is about the movie Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close from Stephen Daldry, based on a novel by Jonathan Safran Foer .

I would like to congratulate director Stephen Daldry, producer Scott Rudin and script writer Eric Roth, and the actors, who did an impressing and outstanding performance: Thomas Horn (Oskar), Tom Hanks, Sandra Bullock, Zoe Caldwell, Max von Sydow, Viola Davis, John Goodman, Jeffrey Wright and all the actors in the movie.

The blog is my personal reflection of what I consider a movie which is more than a fiction movie, a fusion of reality, fiction and a story, which can be a real story for many people and families affected by the 9/11 tragedy.

The movie is the story of Oskar, his traumatic witnesses of the loss of his father during the Twin Towers collapse of 9/11, across the phone voice messages of his father, trapped on the 106^th floor of one of the towers, and the live television broadcast of the terrorism attack and utterly devastating consequences.

The movie brings into evidence that the victims are not the fatal casualties alone, that the terrorist attacks of 9/11 had a far reach to a wide community of women, men and children, families, neighborhoods, volunteering fire- and policemen and –women, who gave their lives to safe they lives of other people.

I remember the day, working in my Bern office in Switzerland, when my colleague and friend Tanja entered the room, telling us that the New York Twin Towers were on fire. 10 years later, watching the 9/11 video coverage over the Internet it was difficult for me to understand these events. With Stephen Daldry’s movie I consider myself as a privileged movie theatre goer, who was allowed to get an insight, the tip of an iceberg, of what must be a difficult and unbearable tragedy to many Americans and people from other nations, who have been directly or indirectly affected by a loss of a family member, a parent, a relative, a friend.

What were my emotions and feelings during and after the movie?

• anger over how such a tragedy could happen, in such a highly developed and civilized world
• deep sadness with those affected
• fear of being trapped myself or my loved-ones in a plane or tower building and become victim of a terrorist plot
• strong empathy for the people directly and indirectly affected, even if I do not know them personally
• awareness, sensibility and compassion when walking through the streets of New York and Manhattan and talking to the people there who eventually are victims, having directly or indirectly experienced this traumatic event

I also wanted to reflect of where I see my values/non-values at the present time, while the movie’s images are still strongly present in my mind

• people and humans like you and me
• help for those in need
• to give empathy and love
• families
• peace and harmony for each and everyone in this world
• tolerance for people, from diverse cultures and nations
• equal respect to each and everyone, whether they had a good or a bad day, respecting their believes and values
• I never can imagine what individuals had experienced in their lives, unless I initiate a dialogue with them, again in an empathetic and respectful way, respecting their own feelings, concerns and lived experiences, they might wish to keep for themselves or talk about at some later time

The movie also causes me to raise several diverse questions, which we could consider to look at in more detail

• What efforts and dialogue are needed for ethnicities, nations and people in conflict or at war?
• Which nations and people suffer under totalitarian regimes and how can their situation be improved?
• Is our current economic system jointly responsible for international conflicts and if yes, what ideal economic system is needed to bring peace, freedom and harmony to everyone and which best helps the most needy people on our planet
• There might be other questions you want to add

Another question that comes up, why do humans actually kill each other? And for which reason and purpose?

• When I look at our world of human beings, I always try first to compare and look at nature and how the animal world behaves. Why do animals and predators kill each other? For food is one answer. Do animals go as far as killing to defend a scarce resource, such as water in the desert? Are there other reasons why animals kill each other, e.g. a female spider killing its male counterpart after fecundation? Why do polar bears kill and eat their pups, is it because they lack of food and fight for survival? Why do rats kill each other, when it gets too crowded in their cage? Is it stress caused through the lack of space? Are there animals who in any situation, would never kill each other? And why would this be the case?
• Let’s return to the human world. What happened during colonial expansion? Was the colonialist reason and justification the quest for resources and power through and over resources, the only justification for killing the native cultures, considering them as inferior, sometimes even as not belonging to the human race? Or was it lack of cultivation, knowledge, intelligence, empathy? Or was it self-defense? But whose self-defense, the colonialist’s or the native’s? History learns us that at least the societies of the Western industrialized world developed far reaching colonies spread across the entire globe, leading to unrest, international and civil wars. While the U.S. originally was colonialized and settled under the mission of the British Crown and other European countries, we can say that the people from the Old Continent always strived towards New Frontiers. And what happens if there is no new frontier, if all resources have been explored and exploited? How can our planet maintain itself in balance as a self-sustained and self-regulated eco-system? Or does our planet need to be entirely managed like in a science fiction movie? Or is outer space our New Frontier, again like shown through science fiction movies? Knowing that in a few billion years, our sun is extinguished and thinking in such timescales, humans have no other choice than to look for livelihood alternatives in the universe? And that therefore only new scientific knowledge and new technological development can safeguard the human race? Eventually it does.
• Since we all live in the present, what are ours and other people’s needs today? If we want to safeguard our civilization, we need to live in a sustainable way, carefully balance resources for our societies and the environment. If we want to safeguard the human species, we need at least the knowledge, scientific, technological and resource capacity to build and equip the Ark Noah, and if we have to abandon planet Earth entirely, the spaceship of the future that brings us safely to a planet, from which we know that the human species can survive and reproduce itself.
• And there is religion. We the people of planet Earth, all have our religion. We believe in the divine, based on holy texts and books and what we are told through our religion. From a rational perspective, I cannot explain where I come from and where I am going to be, when my heart stopped beating. Only religion and our belief in religion gives us the belief, that there is another place we call paradise. Well we can also say that there is some negative opposite to paradise, that we call “hell”. But let’s not conjure up fear as it spread for example through the Inquisition from the 13^th century. Religion was used as a motive for war and killing of human beings.
• Why would one human being kill another human being? Does the motive come from discrimination, racism or other injustice? Is it an act of desperation, an act of anger and revenge, imposed and trained behavior or an act of survival in the quest and competition of scarce vital resources, as Darwinist would define the fight for the survival of the fittest (you might want to see the fiction movie “Hunger Games”, based on Suzanne Collins’ trilogy novel)? We need to be aware that population growth, anthropogenic climate change and increasing scarcity of resources are serious and complex issues we need to address and try to solve all together.
• Referring to today’s needs of humanity and nature for sustainability and a sustainable development of our planet, besides power and money, who are these through technology and progress blinded people, destroying the entire planet and its entire biodiversity with the help of globalization thriving towards monocultures and monoculture dependency of the entire world and civilization? Frankenstein, with the help of technology, natural forces, living organs, dead human and human body parts engineered life, psychologically and emotionally disturbed humanoids or human-like monsters.

Sometimes I have the impression that planet Earth has turned in a fragile glass ball, that could break at any moment, human beings returning to their basic instincts, men as hunters and gatherers, woman searching for the strongest gene pool or caring for the caverns, family and children. Yes, and when and where is “sometimes”? But this setting belongs to the past, to history. Today all resources are claimed and shared among different parties or nations, more or less peacefully. A fragile balance.

Let’s return to the movie. In what context should I bring the movie? Should I bring into a political and historical context? Should I bring it into a human and psychological context? Context means that I can consider and analyze the movie in different dimensions of thinking and from different perspectives.

There are very strong passages and messages in the movie, for example represented through the conflict between Oskar and his mother:

• Oskar does not seem to have an answer, why the 9/11 terrorist attack occurred. He searches for an answer, but the terrorist attack does not make sense. Neither does the fact that in the morning of 9/11, his father, having an exceptional curriculum and a successful career as entrepreneur and jeweler finds himself trapped in one of the Twin Towers. It seems that with the collapse of the Twin Towers and the loss of his father, Oskar’s rational and logical world, which he founded and constructed with his father, breaks into pieces. Oskar being a bright young child does not possess yet the necessary knowledge and information on the historical and political developments, that lead to the 9/11 terrorist attack. He cannot put the 9/11 events into its geo-political and historical context. Nobody told him the stories, which do not belong into a child’s world. Which leads us to question on how well children can handle their daily exposure to global information and content through media and the Internet. To proceed with the movie, in response to his 9/11 exposure, Oskar develops and builds a new rational and logical construct based around a key, which he hopes gives him his father back, for at least a few minutes.
• Is it difficult for Oskar or a child to make a difference between fiction and reality? Oskar reveals strong skills and competencies in rationality and logical thinking. For Oskar, 9/11 does not make any sense. He sees no rational or logic. And he does not posses (yet) a mental model, 9/11 can be matched or referred to. There is a strong passage in the movie and a series of dialogues and words between Oskar and his mother, reflecting this situation.
• In another dialogue between Oskar and his mother, Oskar expresses that he would have preferred his mother being in the towers and victim, and his father still being alive, revealing the strong dependence of Oskar upon his father. This is a difficult passage in the movie and I want to leave it to the experts of psychoanalysis to come up with answers to comment on this situation and message, the triangular relationships between son-father, son-mother, father-mother. We could also imagine different scenarios: what if Oskar would have had a brother or a sister, what if the story was about a girl instead of a boy? Also the movie tells us little about Oskar’s relationship with his mother before 9/11. Both, Oskar and mother have to deal with the difficult loss of father and husband. What we can assume is that as Oskar is building his new world, he also changes expectations towards his mother after 9/11, and that he expects her to fulfill both, mother and father role. She does it in actually closely following and supporting Oskar’s activities, without interfering or letting him know.

What are the message and the learning from this movie? Whether we look before or after 9/11 from a macro-cosmic perspective of our world, or the micro-cosmic perspective of Oskar, is there something like a “right” direction, our world should evolve to? And what are the solutions we have at hand?