Film Adaptations

For Book 2, I'm reading Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close by Jonathan Safran Foer. It would be a very challenging book to adapt into a film. It is all about the thoughts of the characters and is a stream of consciousness book. It would pose some difficulties in incorporating the depth of all the thoughts and emotions, and making the movie as deep as the book.

One of the scenes the movie would have to keep is when Oskar, the 9 year old boy whose father was killed in 9/11, is going through his dad’s bedroom in the beginning of the book. Touches the suit his dad had worn the night before his death, and he finds a blue vase on the highest shelf in his father’s room. The pretty blue color catches his eye and he climbs up to take a look. Oskar finds an envelope, with the word “Black” written on it, with a key in it in there and takes it out to closer examine it. As he does so, however, he accidentally knocks the vase down when he loses his balance. I think this scene is important because that is how he gets the key that starts him on a journey to find where it came from and what it unlocks. He meets many people and has many experiences along the way, but this is where the story really starts.

Another scene I think is important to keep is when he goes to the marker store to see if that’s where his dad got the marker that he used to write on the envelope with. Oskar searches through all the test pads of paper looking for his dad’s name to be scribbled on there while trying out a new writing utensil. Sure enough, he did find the name “Thomas Schnell” written multiple times in the little tablet of paper. This is the first step of his journey to discover what the key means, and he determines that Black is the last name of someone.

           

Another important scene is when Oskar meets Mr. Black, a wise, elderly man who lives just above him. Mr. Black talks extremely loudly at first because he had turned off his hearing aid for ages to save the battery. Jack asks him if he knew Thomas Schnell, and Mr. Black goes through his drawers and drawers of index cards with peoples’ names on them and a one word summary of their personalities. This is the first person Oskar tells about his mission to find the meaning of the key.

Two scenes I don’t think they should include is the scene where Oskar’s grandfather makes a nude sculpture of his grandma. It’s too graphic, rated-x, and doesn’t help the book along that much.

The scene about Oskar bashing in the boys head in Hamlet wasn’t necessary either. It is violent and scary. It showed the frustration Oskar felt with his dad dying a horrible death, Grandma embarrassing him, being bullied at school, and his mother moving on. However, I think they could probably invent another way to show his anger without smashing some boys head.