A friend once told me he could save me a lot of time and effort writing film reviews by buying me a slogan T-shirt that would encompass my entire thesis: ‘Buy the book instead.’ If only I could find an item of novelty underwear with ‘Not another 9/11 movie’ written on the arse, we’d be in business.
Jonathan Safran Foer’s book was a 9/11 novel, but not a ‘9/11 Novel.’ A quirky, heartbreaking tale told with the wit of Curious Case Of The Dog In The Night-Time, the story follows socially awkward, maladjusted Oskar and his attempts to piece back together the incomplete jigsaw that is his life following his father’s death (“on that fateful day”, a ‘9/11 Synopsis’ would read.) Foer’s writing was an entertaining and emotional exercise in precocious, unreliable narration: a sad, strange and funny account of one boy’s search for understanding where there was none to be found. The final pages of the book, a flip-through animation of a body falling from a tower, acts as a devastating and haunting reminder that sometimes, there is no comprehension, no catharsis, only an answerless abyss.
Unfortunately, director Stephen Daldry either didn’t read the novel, or read it through ‘9/11 Glasses.’ As a Sarah McLachlan-lite score reminds you to feel grave and melancholy, his offensively sanctimonious, emotionally bullying screenplay forces young Thomas Horn to play the most obnoxious, shrill protagonist imaginable. Written as an affected brat instead of a manic pixie Asperger’s sufferer, metaphor-laden flashbacks show his formerly idyllic homelife with his dad (Tom Hanks, bizarrely mugging it up) and mum (Sandra Bullock, she of the no-make-up school of award-seeking). As Oskar’s quest around New York introduces him to an endless stream of lonely characters, not even the incredible Max Von Sydow can penetrate the manipulative treacle.
Skip the film. Buy the book. Order me that T-shirt.