Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close

Kendra and I watched Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close the other night. Warning. If you haven't seen the movie yet and want to be surprised by the ending; SPOILER ALERT. What I want to write about takes place toward the end of the movie.

Here goes...

Extremely Loud tells the story of nine-year-old Oskar Schell whose father dies in the September 11 attack on the World Trade Center. In the days following the funeral, while rooting through his father's closet, Oskar discovers a small envelope with a key. Oskar, who is somewhere on the autistic spectrum, believes the key is a clue left for him by his father. The only clue about the key's purpose is that the name "Black" is written on the outside of the envelope. To discover why his father left the key, Oskar resolves to search out every single New Yorker with the last name "Black." A large part of the movie tracks these humorous and awkward encounters.

The apparent climax of the film comes when Oskar finally discovers to whom the key belongs. As it turns out, the key has nothing much to do with Oskar's father. It most certainly was not anything Oskar's father intended for him. It wasn't a clue about anything. Oskar finding the key was just an 'accident.'

That discovery (the key's true owner) is interesting enough, but the real climax of the movie comes when we discover what Oskar's mother has been up to during his search. Up to this point the mother appears distant, passive, and engulfed in her own grief. She seems concerned that her nine-year-old is sneaking off every Saturday but she does nothing to stop him. However, when Oskar's search is over, when in despair he confronts the harsh reality that his father is never coming back, when all of life seems completely pointless and random, Oskar's mother reveals what she's been up to while he has been traipsing all over New York.

She was going before him.

She knew the mind of her son. She got into his way of thinking and made the decision to go and visit every single New Yorker with the last name "Black" before her son got there. Every person Oskar met had been met before by his mother. Every door he knocked on, every doorbell he rang, every rejection he experienced had been met before by his mother.

Our pastor Rachel is fond of giving a blessing at the end of worship that affirms the fact that we go nowhere that God is not with us. This is the Holy Spirit's work. He (or she?) inhabits our mind with the mind of Christ and prepares the way for us. There is nowhere we go, no person we encounter, no situation we face but that has been prepared by the Holy Spirit.

John 14:1-2 "Let not your hearts be troubled...I go to prepare a place for you."