It's not easy being small. It's hard being a kid with Asperger's Syndrome. It’s terrible to be a child with Asperger’s syndrome, and also to lose a loving and understanding father. And only a mysterious key with a mysterious note found in a mysterious vase leaves any hope.
The film touches on the theme of the terrorist attacks in the United States on September 11, 2001. On this pivotal day for America, 9-year-old Oscar Schell's class, who suffers from Asperger's syndrome, was sent home early due to the horrific events that rocked the country. When the boy gets home, he finds five messages on his answering machine from his father, Thomas, who is at a business meeting at the World Trade Center. The phone rings for the sixth time, but the frightened Oscar cannot bring himself to answer. The answering machine records a sixth message, which stops when the second tower falls. Oscar realizes that his father is dead. In order not to upset his mother again, he replaces the old answering machine with the one he just bought.
A year after the tragic death of his father, Oscar decides to enter his room, where, in a blue vase that accidentally broke, he discovers an envelope with the name “Black”, inside which lies a key. On a newspaper clipping, a boy sees the words “Don’t Stop Searching” circled in red marker. He is determined to find the lock to which this key would fit, and the right person with the surname Black.
Opposite Oscar's house lives his grandmother, who recently moved an elderly tenant of a small room next to her. One night, a boy runs into him and tries to speak, but he was speechless in his youth, during World War II, watching the death of his parents. He communicates with people using notes. After some time, Oscar and the Tenant become friends; with the help of an elderly man, the boy learns to deal with his fears and troubles. Observing the Tenant's gait and movements, Oscar notices a resemblance to his deceased father. After several days have passed, the Tenant leaves in an unknown direction.
In his father's newspaper clipping, Oscar accidentally finds the telephone number of Abby Black, who had previously met the boy, circled with a marker. Together they go to Abby's ex-husband, William, who may know something about the key. He says that he has been looking for this very key for more than a year. The fact is that his deceased father left it to him in a blue vase, which William sold at a sale to Oscar's father. The disappointed boy runs away.
In the final scenes of the film, Oscar's mother examines a book of memories that the boy made with his own hands and called “Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close.” Oscar's grandfather (Tenant) is reunited with his ex-wife.
JONATHAN SAFRAN FOER
EXTREMELY LOUD & EXTREMELY CLOSE
Embodying my idea of beauty
What can you come up with with a teapot? What if his nose opened and closed under the pressure of steam and was then like a mouth: he could whistle Zykin melodies, or recite Shakespeare, or chat with me for company? I could invent a teapot that reads in Dad's voice to help me finally fall asleep, or even a set of teapots that sing along instead of a choir in Yellow Submarine- this is a Beatles song, which means “bugs”, and I adore bugs, because entomology is one of my reasons d'être, and this is a French expression that I know. Or one more trick: I could teach my anus to talk when I fart. And if I wanted to soak off the terrible foam, I would teach him to say “Not me!” during exorbitant nuclear salvoes. And if I fired an extremely nuclear salvo in the Hall of Mirrors, which is in Versailles, which is next to Paris, which, of course, is in France, then my anus could say: “ Se n "etais pas moil»
What can you come up with with microphones? What if we swallowed them and they played our heartbeats through mini speakers in the pockets of our overalls? You skate down the street in the evening and hear everyone’s heartbeat, and everyone hears yours, like a sonar. One thing is unclear: I wonder if our hearts will beat synchronously, like how women who live together have their periods synchronously, which I know about, although, in truth, I don’t want to know. It's a complete blast - and only in one department of the hospital where children are being given birth will there be a ringing sound, like a crystal chandelier on a motor yacht, because the children will not have time to immediately synchronize their heartbeats. And at the finish line of the New York Marathon there will be a roar like in war.
And one more thing: how many times does it happen when you need to evacuate in an emergency, but people don’t have their own wings, at least not yet, but what if you come up with a life vest from birdseed?
My first jiu-jitsu class was three and a half months ago. I became terribly interested in self-defense for obvious reasons, and my mother decided that another physical activity in addition to tambourine would be useful for me, so my first jiu-jitsu class took place three and a half months ago. There were fourteen children in the group, and they all wore cool white robes. We rehearsed our bows and then sat cross-legged, and then Sensei Mark asked me to come over. “Kick me between the legs,” he said. I'm complex" Excusez-moi?" - I said. He spread his legs and said, “I want you to slam me between my legs as hard as you can.” He dropped his hands to his sides, took a deep breath and closed his eyes - this convinced me that he was not joking. “Babai,” I said, but thought to myself: Come on? He said, “Come on, fighter. Deprive me of offspring." - “Deprive you of offspring?” He didn’t open his eyes, but he was very upset, and then said: “You won’t succeed anyway. But you can see how a well-trained body can absorb shock. Now strike.” I said, “I am a pacifist,” and since most of my peers do not know the meaning of this word, I turned around and told the others: “I believe that depriving people of offspring is wrong. Basically". Sensei Mark said, “Can I ask you a question?” I turned to him and said, “Can I ask you a question?” - that’s already a question.” He said, “Don’t you dream of becoming a jiu-jitsu master?” “No,” I said, although I also stopped dreaming about heading our family’s jewelry business. He said, “Do you want to know when a jiu-jitsu student becomes a jiu-jitsu master?” “I want to know everything,” I said, although this is no longer true. He said, “A student of jiu-jitsu becomes a master of jiu-jitsu when he deprives his master of offspring.” I said, "Wow." My last jiu-jitsu class was three and a half months ago.
How I miss my tambourine now, because even after everything I still have weights on my heart, and when you play it, the weights seem lighter. My signature number on the tambourine is “Flight of the Bumblebee” by composer Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov, I also downloaded it to my mobile phone, which I had after my dad’s death. It’s quite surprising that I’m performing “Flight of the Bumblebee,” because in some places you have to hit extremely fast, and it’s still terribly difficult for me because my wrists are still underdeveloped. Ron suggested that I buy a five-drum kit. Money, of course, cannot buy love, but, just in case, I asked if there would be Zildjian plates on it. He said, “Whatever you want,” and then he took the yo-yo from my table and started “walking the dog.” I knew he wanted to make friends, but he got incredibly angry. "Yo-yo moi“- I said, taking the yo-yo from him. But in truth, I wanted to tell him: “You are not my dad and you will never be.”
It’s funny, yes, how the number of dead people is growing, but the size of the land is not changing, and does this mean that soon you won’t be able to bury anyone in it at all, because you’ll run out of space? For my ninth birthday last year, my grandmother gave me a subscription to National Geographic, which she calls National Geography. She also gave me a white jacket because I only wear white, but it was too big so it will last a long time. She also gave me my grandfather's camera, which I like for two reasons. I asked why he didn't take it with him when he left her. She said, “Maybe he wanted you to have it.” I said: “But I was minus thirty years old then.” She said, "Whatever." In short, the coolest thing I read in National Geographic, this is that the number of people living on earth now is greater than the number of deaths in the entire history of mankind. In other words, if everyone wants to play Hamlet at the same time, someone will have to wait because there won't be enough skulls for everyone!
What if you come up with skyscrapers for the dead and build them deeper? They could be located right under the skyscrapers for the living that are building skyward. People could be buried a hundred floors underground, and the world of the dead would be directly under the world of the living. Sometimes I think it would be cool if skyscrapers moved up and down by themselves, and the elevators stood still. Let’s say you want to go up to the ninety-fifth floor, press button 95, and the ninety-fifth floor approaches you. This can be terribly useful, because if you are on the ninety-fifth floor and a plane crashes below, the building itself will lower you to the ground, and no one will get hurt, even if you forgot your birdseed life jacket at home that day.
I've only been in a limousine twice in my life. The first time was terrible, although the limousine itself was wonderful. I’m not allowed to watch TV at home, and I’m not allowed to watch TV in limousines either, but it was still cool that there was a TV there. I asked if we could drive past the school so Tube and Minch could look at me in the limousine. Mom said that school was out of the way and that we shouldn’t be late for the cemetery. "Why not?" - I asked, which, in my opinion, was a good question, because if you think about it, then really - why not? Although this is no longer the case, I used to be an atheist, that is, I did not believe in things that were not proven by science. I believed that when you died, you are completely dead, and you don’t feel anything, and you don’t have dreams. And it’s not that now I believe in things that have not been proven by science - far from it. I just now believe that these are terribly complex things. And then, in any case, it’s not as if we were really burying him.
The novel “Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close” by Jonathan Foer, a young but already terribly famous and incredibly talented American writer, is not entirely new in our book distribution, but very symbolic, especially for today. Minus some logical and factual errors, this book was an elegant attempt to talk about serious topics in a sentimental and tragic way - and at the same time, an attempt couched in a fascinating, but overtly commercial form of fiction.
Lives in New York, Manhattan, a boy named Oscar Schell. He learns French, understands classical music, doesn’t get along with his peers, doesn’t watch TV (and therefore doesn’t know who Hermione Granger is, but he has already read “A Brief History of Time” by Stephen Hawking), plays the tambourine, and uses a rare film camera. His father is the head of a jewelry company, a smart and inventive man, tells his son bedtime stories and urban legends, hides treasures for him in Central Park and, of course, is the best dad in the world.
And then, on the eleventh day of autumn, seven-year-old Oscar returns home and finds five messages from his father’s cell phone on his answering machine. The last message comes at ten hours, twenty-two minutes, twenty-seven seconds: in a minute and twenty-seven seconds, the Twin Towers, crumpled by explosions, will collapse, leaving the boy with an inescapable longing for the life that on September 11, 2001 changed forever.
Even after a year, I still find it terribly difficult to do some things, like take a shower (for some reason) and ride the elevator (of course). There are a whole bunch of things that annoy me, such as suspension bridges, germs, airplanes, fireworks, Arabs in the subway (even though I'm not a racist), Arabs in restaurants, cafes and other public places, scaffolding, drainage and subway grates, abandoned bags , shoes, people with mustaches, smoke, knots, tall buildings, turbans. I often feel like I'm in the middle of a huge black ocean or in outer space, but not like when I'm having fun. Everything just becomes incredibly distant. It's worst at night. I started inventing different things and then I couldn’t stop, like the beavers I know about. People think that beavers cut down trees to build dams, but in fact, due to the fact that their teeth grow throughout their lives, and if they did not constantly grind them down by cutting down trees, their teeth would gradually grow into their faces, and then the beavers would be finished. It was the same with my brain.
“Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close” is a story about the irreversibility of time and those disgusting scabs that, under its influence, form on the scratched soul of a person, regardless of age. For Oscar, an intelligent and eccentric child with a hypertrophied perception of the world, the internal struggle with grief does not begin with the psychotherapy sessions to which his mother takes him; no - at the moment when he finds an envelope with the name “Black” in his father’s room. Inside the envelope is a key to one of New York's 162 million locks, a secret connecting him with his dead father.
In his travels through the destinies of the many Blacks who inhabit the city, Oscar does not gain any special wisdom or, even less, relief from heart weights, although each of his new acquaintances turns out to be a person worthy of a separate book. All these people are in one way or another crippled by their sense of the past: an old man who has been driving a nail into the headboard of his bed every day for many years since his wife’s death, and a woman who is making a museum out of her apartment in honor of her still living husband; the caretaker of the Empire State Building who did not leave the top of the skyscraper and the unknown man who began to cry only because he heard another person’s greeting on the intercom... Oscar’s experiences will not be put to rest even after finding the mysterious castle - and it would be strange to put any end to the little one’s life at all a boy who had just turned nine.
The only way to defeat the past is to ask God to reverse the history of the creation of the world. Oscar is a naive atheist and this option is not suitable for him, so he invents objects that can bring exceptional benefits to humanity: ambulances the length of the patient’s entrance to the hospital, life jackets made from birdseed, etc. He also pastes pictures into his album entitled “Things That Happened to Me.” Among others, there is a photograph printed frame by frame of a man falling from a roof, which you can quickly, quickly flip through in the opposite direction, to a safe and calm place. Then. Surprisingly, this action that ends the book, which is neither a conclusion nor a solution, is enough for the composition of the novel to take on a very specific form - a ray directed to infinity from the point of no return.
The boy's story is intricately intertwined with a strange, even somewhat surreal story about his beloved grandmother and her husband, who left his wife before the birth of his son, and returned only after he learned of his death. There are many frankly pretentious details in this story - the grandfather carries with him a suitcase of letters that he never sent to his son (he will later put these letters in his empty coffin); he has “yes” and “no” tattooed on his arms because years ago he lost the ability to speak out loud; he has been living in his grandmother’s apartment for two years, but she forbids him to communicate with his grandson, who does not know about the existence of a relative. However, this couple allows Foer to sharpen both the theme of love (profoundly illusory and terribly vague even for the author himself), and the theme of human violence, key to the novel: the elder Schells survived the merciless and senseless bombing of Dresden, which completely destroyed their former life.
There are countless such people all over the world, and each has its own weights on its heart, and its own scabs on its soul. If you are not satisfied with the final moral (which, as already mentioned, is not present at all in the finale), then the one voiced to Oscar by one of his new friends, a former war correspondent, is best suited for its role. This man, who wrote about all the military conflicts of the last century, tells the boy how he gave up his profession, returned to America and, first of all, cut down a tree in the park that his wife had once tripped over. From this wood he made a bed, which he and his wife shared for many years. I asked, “What was the name of your last war?” He said: “My last war was with this tree!” I asked who won, which I thought was a good question because it allowed him to answer that he did and feel proud. He said: “The ax has won! He always wins!”
P. S. It’s worth mentioning two more things:
Firstly, despite the fact that the electronic format is usually more convenient, in the case of Foer’s book it is better to turn to the paper version of the novel, which is illustrated in such a way as to enhance the effect of individual parts of the text (there are photographs from Oscar’s album and his half-mad letters grandfather, and even a piece in which words are replaced with tone dialing numbers).
Secondly, last year a film was released based on this novel, which was even nominated for an Oscar. I have not seen the film, but judging by the reviews, the plot and psychological accents are placed somewhat differently in it. So for those who have already seen the film, reading the book should be especially interesting.
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