Extremely Loud And Incredibly Close Response

“History, despite its wrenching pain, cannot be reversed, but if faced with courage, need not be lived again". The film "Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close", directed by Stephen Daldry and edited by Scott Rudin, is a film that encompasses the trials and triumphs of one family affected by the New York terrorist attacks of 2001. The film outlines the comfortable life an average family, a married couple and their nine year old son, living within New York City limits. The father had been employed in a field that had him in the World Trade Centre when it was struck by a plane, killing him undoubtedly. What carries on throughout the rest of the film is the story of a young boy who yearns only to complete the final journey his father had outlined,

Oskar learned, distantly from the mystery man due to the fact that he himself could not transcend the details, It is later established that the mysterious man is Thomas Schell Sr., and that he is Oskar’s grandfather. In a similar way that 9/11 altered the way that Oskar looked at the world, the bombings at Dresden changed Thomas Schell’s outlook. The two become quite close, bonding over their mutual exposure to overwhelming mortality. Dresden had been a city of utmost culture and beauty prior to the bombings, and it had become a place that people would run to in order to escape persecution in Russia. In February of 1945 the town was completely destroyed when the Allied forces dropped bombs that resulted in over 50 000 casualties. Thomas Schell Sr. had been a soldier with the German forces, and he was incapable of translating the horrors he had witnessed into words, he had become a true recluse. He had become mute in most aspects, responding to questions with his hands rather than with his words. Through spending time with Oskar, seeing his perpetual pain, he is forced to not quite overcome but work through his own suffering from all of those years prior. He learned that it helps; that to get through pain family and camaraderie are