Exremely Loud and Incredibly Close (2011)

This is the story of a young boy who lost his father in the 9/11 attack and tries to keep his memory alive by trying to solve a mystery.

When I first heard about this movie I was reluctant to see it. I've seen and heard of so many 9/11 stories and conspiracies and propaganda that I thought this would be more of the same. That it would be  trying to make me believe something. Instead, it was a very moving story about coping with loss and fear. I was in tears for many scenes, it was really moving.

The protagonist is a boy named Oskar Schell, a young boy who has many fears. He mentions at one point that he was tested for aspergers, but it's not clearly stated that he has this disorder. What is stressed is that he has many fears and that he's extremely intelligent. His father makes up mysteries for him to solve, the one we find them in the middle of is discovering what happened to the 6th borough of New York. So his father will pose a question and give very vague clues, or none at all, leaving Oskar to make his own way, giving him an outlet for his very inquisitive and capable mind. An important part of solving the mystery is having to talk to people, which Oskar has a lot of difficulty with.

Then, as Oskar calls it, the 'worst day' happened and his father died in one of the twin towers. Oskar is devastated, obviously, and eventually feels that the memory of his father is slipping farther and farther away from him, and around this time he breaks a vase that was in his father's closet. Inside that vase was a small envelope with the word 'black' on it, with a key inside. Oskar decides that the word must be a name, and then, in the style of the mystery he was solving with his father, he goes about trying to speak with every Black in New York to see if anyone knows what the key was for.

I think the most moving part of this movie for me was how afraid of everything Oskar was, and how he pushed on in his quest despite that. There's a lot of pain in this movie, we get to see a lot of people who are going through a rough time, and Oskar's search seems to almost give those people a voice. Going on this search also brings him closer to the people who are still in his life. A definite watch.