‘Extremely Close’ is incredibly uneven

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Looking for answers: Max von Sydow and Thomas Horn in “Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close.”

Updated: January 20, 2012 11:15AM

EXTREMELY LOUD
& INCREDIBLY CLOSE
★ ★ 1/2

“Only humans can cry tears,” notes the precocious young protagonist of this fine-pedigreed yet frustrating 9/11 drama. It’s a seemingly random statement when it occurs, just one of many factoids the brainy kid drops from time to time, but in hindsight it seems likely to have been a reminder to the audience about the way we’re supposed to be responding to his suffering.

Whether you’re going to need that reminder will depend largely on how you feel about our young hero and the nearly impossible task he has set for himself. Is he a brave little genius seeking the truth in spite of his overwhelming fears or an annoying little know-it-all with a bad case of self-absorption?

The strange thing about “Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close,” director Stephen Daldry’s adaptation of Jonathan Safran Foer’s controversial 2005 novel, is that it can make you feel one way one moment and the other the next. You may ultimately wind up feeling more moved than unmoved, but there’s also a real possibility that the two extremes will merely cancel each other out.

Daldry, who has the distinction of receiving a best director Oscar nomination for each of his three previous feature films (“Billy Elliot,” “The Hours” and “The Reader”), chose well when he hired an unknown young actor named Thomas Horn to play young Oscar Schell. Though Horn may have succeeded too well at playing the hyper-intelligent, multi-phobic, emotionally detached boy, at the cost of depriving the film of an easy repository for audience sympathy.

Intellectually voracious and afraid of just about everything as a result of his borderline Asperger’s syndrome, young Oscar has an extremely close relationship with his father Thomas (Tom Hanks in perfect-husband-and-father mode) and what appears to be a nodding acquaintance with his mother Linda (Sandra Bullock, also good). In an attempt to engage his son’s intellect and help him overcome his fears, Thomas creates elaborate mysteries and puzzles for him to solve, involving “reconnaissance missions” into the outside world.

When his father dies, because he happened to be in a meeting at the World Trade Center on what his son calls “The Worst Day,” Oscar eventually convinces himself he has been left one final mission. While looking through his father’s closet, he finds a mysterious key in a small envelope with the word “black” written on it. So he searches phone books for the 427 people living in New York City with the last name of Black and sets out to visit each of them, certain the key will unlock a final message from his father.

What follows is an assortment of encounters with random New Yorkers as the boy, outfitted with a camera, binoculars and a tambourine, knocks on one door after another — and somehow manages to avoid being hacked into small pieces. All of the encounters are slightly odd (and a bit precious), but he’s a slightly odd kid. Oscar makes the acquaintance of one lady (Viola Davis) as her husband is in the process of moving out and, noticing she is sad, asks if he can kiss her. Gradually, these scenes begin to appear as a sort of tapestry of shared loss, with a few simple moments, here and there, that ring true — despite the filter of whimsy.

The situation improves when an old man who may or may not be his grandfather (Max von Sydow, excellent), struck mute after surviving the Allies’ firebombing of Dresden in World War II, joins Oscar on his search and, without a word of dialogue (the words “yes” and “no” are tattooed on his palms), contributes considerable gravity to the quest. We also learn that Oscar’s compulsion to solve his father’s last puzzle is driven by the guilt he feels over answering-machine messages left by his father on 9/11 — including a final message unheard until a devastating climax involving the collapse of the Twin Towers. And that his mother, who bears the brunt of Oscar’s anger while she grieves, has a secret too — but not a guilty one.

For every moment that works well, though, there are a couple that don’t quite make it — and for a subject like this one, not quite is not good enough.