Extremely Good & Incredibly Right

I saw the movie, Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close, last night, and loved it.  I sort of expected to not like the movie, since the book is my all time favorite, and I knew that the movie couldn't do everything that is done in the book within the 2 hours and 6 minutes that it is on the screen.  While the movie was not exactly like the book, it is true to the spirit of the book, and well worth the price of a ticket.

My favorite scene from the book, Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close, by Jonathan Safran Foer, where Oskar looks up his dad's name in Mr. A.R. Black's card catalogue, was not in the movie.  In fact, A.R. Black was not in the movie, even though he was such an integral character in the book.  The other Blacks who Oskar visits in the book are also mostly absent.  The movie shows Oskar visiting lots of people, but we don't really get to know the people that he visits.  In the book, the grandma has a much more important role than in the movie, and in the movie, the grandpa has a much more important role than in the book, but it works.

My husband, who hasn't read the book, felt that something about the phone messages that the dad left on 9/11 was unresolved.  It didn't bother me, because I knew what happened in the book, and it was like the movie left off before what happened in the book could happen.  The issue of Oskar's mom being MIA throughout most of the book was resolved in the movie more completely than in the book, and I liked how the screenwriter did that.

All told, if I could buy the DVD today, I would and I'd watch it again right now.

Still Reading:  This Beautiful Life by Helen Schulman
 
Still Listening to:  The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Diaz.  Another Oscar.  I hope I like him too.