by Brian Kesler
How this film was nominated for Best Picture by the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences is beyond me. This film capitalizes on a national, historic tragedy and uses it to propel a gimmicky plot in which a young boy walks all over New York City, visiting every resident within said area possessing the surname Black. Why, you ask? His dad died in 9/11, and he found a key in an envelope with the name Black. What does he expect the key will open? No idea. But, he meets with every person named Black in all of New York by walking to the majority of their homes (he eventually uses the Subway). This is supposed to somehow make him realize that although his dad is dead there are countless people who are alive and they have losses and tragedies too; he is not alone in the world. I can speak from experience that walking just ten blocks in New York City is tiring, let alone visiting every burrow on the map.
We never spend much time with any of the Blacks, except one. We get the Reader's Digest version, with a series of montages that give us brief glimpses of each encounter. We never sit down with these people. We never empathize with them. We never see them interacting with our protagonist in any other way than a shot of one family giving him a drawing, and a man putting him on a tractor, and a girl petting a horse with him, and lots of people saying, "I'm sorry about your dad." This doesn't give us insight in any way.
Although the kid is likable and smart, he's a little too quirky. He's quirky for the sake of being quirky. It doesn't feel genuine. Thomas Horn plays him and sometimes I felt sorry that his dialogue was being edited in the manner it was. He pervades the film with a pretentious voice-over that doesn't reveal the thoughts and musings of any child alive, and the track is clipped and cut so that his dialogue plays on top of itself in an endless arrangement of noise. Just because the film considers itself quirky. It's one thing for a child to be witty. Take Alice from the Wonderland books. What made her so endearing was that she often didn't know what she was talking about, yet would have little sophisticated conversations with herself in pretending to be a learned and authoritative opinionist. If this movie wants me to believe this kid is as smart as he is, they should've written in that he's already graduated from high school with several scholarships lined up. Apparently, he has Asperger's, so he's loud enough about his intelligence. The school has to know about it. There's no way he'd have been kept in the regular curriculum. Ever.
Max von Sydow, famed Silent filmmaker, has a supporting role that is endearing but a little too cute and quirky. Oh, this movie. Why does everything have to be so cute and quirky? Why is everybody in this movie mute, or a strange German, or a kid with Asperger's, or a crazy black priestess, or a man who does nothing but hug people, or a woman that can't say anything but, "Go!" Characters need to be interesting, yes, but gimmicks do not a character make.
Now, there is some good in this movie, don't fear. All the performances are great, particularly Tom Hanks as the dead father, seen in flashbacks. Sandra isn't given much room to shine, but she does well enough. The scene in which the child hears his father leaving a frantic voice-mail and turns to see the World Trade Center fall as the phone cuts off is haunting and well edited. The photography in general is good. Alexander Desplat's irritating score is not. The film is directed by Stephen Daldry, who gave us the equally pretentious 'The Reader,' in which he suggests that it is more shameful to be illiterate than to torture and kill Jews. I just wish this movie had been about a family dealing with loss, and the tragedy of such an event. Instead, it overreaches.
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