★ 8 / 10
**The human need to find meaning in the
Filipe Manuel Neto
**The human need to find meaning in the death of a loved one.** I confess that I didn't really know what I was going to find when I started watching this…
**The human need to find meaning in the death of a loved one.**
I confess that I didn't really know what I was going to find when I started watching this movie. I wasn't expecting much, even though I was aware that it was a film about the September 11 attacks, and that it had some actors that I respect, and I like to see. Perhaps on purpose, the film begins in a heavy and slow way, and it is not very easy to go beyond the initial half hour.
However, the film improves a lot as we get to know the main character, a boy whose father died in the attacks and who is trying to deal with this loss in the best way possible. Whatever the age or situation, the loss of a parent is always dramatic. Believe me, dear reader, who is following me so patiently in these lines, I have been feeling it in my skin during the last few months, since I lost my beloved mother recently, and I believe that this personal circumstance had an influence on the way I ended up seeing myself in the boy, and in the emotional and moving way he tries to deal with grief and absence. He believes his father left him one last "treasure hunt" around a mysterious key, and he struggles to see meaning in his father's death, and in finding the key. It sounds childish, but allow me to be honest, I confess that I too, in the silence of my suffering and pain, felt and still feel the need to find some reason, some order in the midst of random chaos. Perhaps we, human beings, cannot accept that the people we love so much... simply die. And maybe we're right in not accepting just that...
By that, I mean that the horrible tragedy that happened in New York made sense in itself? No... evil is meaningless, but it doesn't need to make sense. What I refuse to think is that all those people died in vain. I believe that the American people, and all of us as a Western society, find meaning in everything that has happened, and we see those people as victims of unspeakable cruelty, which poignantly reminds us how vulnerable we are to the mind of a madman, vile and determined enough. I believe that each family member who lost someone there found a very personal meaning in their loss, and I hope this helped in the task of dealing with what happened.
Despite being very young, I liked the work developed by Thomas Horn. He did everything well, and he gives his character a naivety that is never childish or lacking in sense and intelligence, quite the opposite. Tom Hanks is, as is almost always the case, impeccable and gives the boy's father an aura of familiarity and sympathy of his own, which the actor knows how to use very well. Likewise, the charismatic and professional Sandra Bullock did a very interesting job in the role of the mother. Despite being nominated for an Oscar, I think Max Von Sydow has done much better and more complete work. Even so, I liked the way he was able to express himself and communicate without using a single word. Zoe Caldwell also did a good job, albeit in a much more restrained register than the others. On the other hand, I thought that John Goodman, Viola Davis and Jeffrey Wright are all very underused.
The film covers several places in New York, and it is not necessary to have visited the iconic city to recognize them very easily, and appreciate the friendly way in which the film takes advantage of them and gives them shine and beauty. The cinematography helped a lot at this point, with a very well worked light, color and brightness, and a good post-editing of the images.
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★ 8 / 10
One of the biggest surprises of 2011!
Boba_Fett1138
This seems to be really one of those cases of you'll either love this movie or completely, totally hate it. I personally really wasn't expecting much from this…
This seems to be really one of those cases of you'll either love this movie or completely, totally hate it. I personally really wasn't expecting much from this movie and knew very little about it as well but I was completely surprised and wowed by it. It's a really warm, heartfelt movie, filled with both adventure and drama.
Things could had so easily turned cheap and sappy in this movie but it really didn't. Instead the movie at all times felt like a real warm and honest one, with some great storytelling in it and no, I'm normally absolutely not a fan of Stephen Daldry's movies and directing approach. What I absolutely loved about this movie is that it's being told almost entirely from the eyes of a child, who has lost his father and is trying to cope with it by going on, what he thinks, is the one last adventure through the city of New York, that his father had planned for him.
Really, over the years we have had many adventure movies of course but how many of them successfully combined it with some true heartfelt drama in it as well. On that level this movie is already really an unique and original one, that works on so many different levels.
It seems that the only reason why some people have some major problems with this movie and are even offended by it is because its drama involves 9/11 and uses its events to emote its audience. And of course while they have a point about this, I didn't feel at all as if it was using it in a cheap or gimmicky way, to easily get emotions from its audience. The only one thing I will complain about was that it kept referencing a bit too much at it at times. Really, one mention of it could had sufficed but the movie instead kept using some flashbacks at times, which were still powerful but it got done 2 or 3 times too many in my opinion. Besides, there were times I even got confused by it and didn't always intermediately noticed that it was a flashback I was watching.
I was absolutely loving all of the characters in this movie and also really liked it that the movie had the guts to portray a little kid as a little kid for a change and not one with some fake emotions, feelings and thoughts. Everybody was a kid once, some much longer ago than others but I do believe everybody should be able to identify in one way or another with its main character, played by the young Thomas Horn, who made his acting debut with this movie. But the same more or less goes for all of the other characters as well, who got very well written and got played by some well known and great actors. This movie probably features both Tom Hanks' and Sandra Bullock's best performance of the past years and Max von Sydow, who never says a word in this movie, even got nominated for an Oscar for his role in this movie.
Really, this is one of the best 2011 movies I have seen and it also definitely ranks among my favorite ones as well.
8/10
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