Welcome to the hammy 9/11 fable about a real swell 11-year-old boy, Oskar, who deals with the loss of his likeable, earnest father (Tom Hanks) in the tragedy. A nerd of nerds, he conjures up a compulsive game on which to channel his grief into grandiosity. He finds a mysterious key hidden in a vase among Dad’s belongings. It has “Black” written on it (a name?) and before we know it our precocious and precious hero stealthily hoofs it across all five boroughs (he’s terrified, panic attack ridden, of the subways) in attempting to knock on the doors of all 472 Blacks listed in the New York phonebook.
Seriously.
If this sounds as simple-minded as Forrest Gump, it is. I’ve got no objection to an allegorical drama about 9/11, just this one. The novel by Jonathan Safran Doer on which it was based, while largely trashed by critics, has its proponents who assert it works better than the film by adhering to a more abstract framework. In the film, directed by Stephen Daldry (The Hours, Billy Elliot, The Reader), the story’s literal components are often flat and constantly held in relief against the kitschy backdrop. When Oskar finally boards a subway because his mysterious new traveling companion (Max Von Sydow) insists, we’ve already endured various people named Black who’ve opened their doors and their lives to Oskar but know nothing of the key. Von Sydow boards with Oskar’s grandmother. Oskar and she communicate by walkie talkie and he creepily can look right in her window since they’re across-the-street neighbors. Von Sydow (he’s excellent) doesn’t speak and instead writes notes and flashes his palms–one has a tattooed “Yes'” the other a “No.” Seems he’s had a tragedy in his life, too, and it involves Dresden.
Thomas Horn does a rather good job as Oskar. He’s the kind of kid who knows it all at 11 (the novel had him at 9) and he may have Aspergers. His energy and focus are unbound, his stability understandably off kilter. His mom (Sandra Bullock) looks the other way at his fierce temper tantrums and his overall shabby treatment of her. Of course he doesn’t tell her about his Black exercise and he also switches out the telephone answering machine so she is spared Hanks’ at first calm, then increasingly frantic messages from the World Trade Center as he hopes to speak with either of them. Viola Davis and Jeffrey Wright in supporting roles, Bullock, and especially Hanks, as the perfect father who never talks down to the boy and mischievously devises clever games for them to play, all keep the proceedings somewhat compelling.
Newsreel shots of the stricken Twin Towers and the pandemonium on the streets are interspersed throughout, as are ghastly photographic images of those who dived out the windows that fateful day. This particularly interests Oscar, who looks back on that “Worst Day” as he calls it, with a meticulous obsession. Knowing how this kid is so smart, he’s probably already read 102 Minutes and seen United 93, the definitive book and docudrama chronicles of 9/11. His story, however, is more immediately about the sudden death of a father who he worshiped and his desire to keep his memory and presence alive in a big-time way. I felt the love alright. But the film’s twin morals–that it’s better to give than to receive and that it’s not the destination but the journey–feel far too snug and smug in the context of what is essentially a fancifully foolhardy conceit that ultimately falls short of the film’s huge task of dramatizing perhaps the greatest national tragedy of our lifetime.
5.5 Phonebooks and Answering Machines (out of 10)