Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close

The human need to find meaning in the death of a loved one.

I confess that I didn't really know what I was going to find when I started watching this movie. I wasn't expecting much, even though I was aware that it was a film about the September 11 attacks, and that it had some actors that I respect, and I like to see. Perhaps on purpose, the film begins in a heavy and slow way, and it is not very easy to go beyond the initial half hour.

However, the film improves a lot as we get to know the main character, a boy whose father died in the attacks and who is trying to deal with this loss in the best way possible. Whatever the age or situation, the loss of a parent is always dramatic. Believe me, dear reader, who is following me so patiently in these lines, I have been feeling it in my skin during the last few months, since I lost my beloved mother recently, and I believe that this personal circumstance had an influence on the way I ended up seeing myself in the boy, and in the emotional and moving way he tries to deal with grief and absence. He believes his father left him one last "treasure hunt" around a mysterious key, and he struggles to see meaning in his father's death, and in finding the key. It sounds childish, but allow me to be honest, I confess that I too, in the silence of my suffering and pain, felt and still feel the need to find some reason, some order in the midst of random chaos. Perhaps we, human beings, cannot accept that the people we love so much... simply die. And maybe we're right in not accepting just that...

By that, I mean that the horrible tragedy that happened in New York made sense in itself? No... evil is meaningless, but it doesn't need to make sense. What I refuse to think is that all those people died in vain. I believe that the American people, and all of us as a Western society, find meaning in everything that has happened, and we see those people as victims of unspeakable cruelty, which poignantly reminds us how vulnerab...