December 13, 2011
Most insufferable movie of the year?
by Melville House
The moment we’ve all been waiting for… The 9/11 novel The New York Times called “irritating” and New York Press hailed as “incredibly false” has been made into a major feature film starring Tom Hanks, Sandra Bollock, and some precocious kid. That’s right, Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close by Jonathan Safran Foer is coming soon to theaters near you: the story of a child “with a gift” who learns to “face his fear” after the death of his dad in The Twin Towers. The film, with a rousing score by U2, seeks to turn profound human tragedy into epic sentimental pity porn of unprecedented proportions. (If you haven’t already seen the trailer, I hate doing this to you, but you can watch it below.) Choire Sicha at The Awl makes the understandable claim that after several “rage-crying fits…I’m not sure I can keep going to the movie theaters until this thing is released and no longer being teased.”
When I had the misfortune of seeing the trailer for the first time this weekend, I felt like… slapped? Spit on? Force fed a bathtub of butter at gunpoint? There’s something about “art” this bad that actually ruins your ability to have real emotions. If grief looks anything like this—full of anthem rock, soft-focus fake tears, and winsome children learning life lessons—then grief must not be something worth feeling. As one of The Awl commentators put it:
Don’t the filmakers realize 9/11 actually happened to some people?
Sing-along Moby-Dick 
New conduct code at Library and Archives Canada muzzles employees and demands “loyalty” to the government 
Novel-to-Screen Film Festival comes to New York in April 
Etgar Keret, author of “What Do We Have in Our Pockets,” has a short film up his sleeve 
6 Comments
New York Public Library’s Books to Remember list
International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award Shortlist (2007)
The Morning News Tournament of Books (Quarterfinalist, 2006)
New York Times bestseller (Fiction, 2005)
Libraires du Québec (Lauréat Roman hors Québéc, 2007)
ALA Outstanding Books for the College Bound (Literature & Language Arts, 2009)
ALA Notable Books for Adults (2006)
Village Voice 25 Favorite Books (2005)
V&A Illustration Award (2005)
International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award Longlist (2007)
I don’t think the people who brought you ‘A Reader’s Manifesto’ are going to be impressed by awards.
Man, this makes me feel like an asshole for loving that book.
Pretentious much? Where is all this hatred coming from? You’re really selling the book short and your angry ranting makes for a sloppy argument. I really appreciated the post modern techniques Foher used in the book and how he played with words. In my opinion, the book is a work of art. As for the trailer, while I can’t say I approve of the U2 anthem, I still think it looks great. I would guess from your pretentious rant that you believe the films and books we take in should make us feel like shit afterwards. It’s OK for a movie to make us feel good or to restore our faith in humanity. Entertainment doesn’t always have to leave us writhing with discomfort or anxiety.
Honestly movies never “restore my faith in humanity, but what they can do is be uplifting. Which seems to be the major issue you have with the text and film. Persoanally, I found your brief summary of the book to be unfair and innacurate. When we looked at this book in my Post 9/11 fiction class, there were plenty of arguments about this very issue. In the end I think that as an artist, if you can take a horrific situation and create something from it that allows people to talk about something as delicate as 9/11 then you’ve done something really meaningful.
I think the problem is it doesn’t make people feel good, I’ve only seen the commercial once and it made my stomach turn, tighten a little. Then it made me wonder what the conversations were like discussing a budget for a movie like this, how profitable can this be.