By Chlotrudis Independent Film Society
Rating: 4.5 cats
Director: Bent Hamer
Starring: Bård Owe | Espen Skjønberg | Henny Moan
Country: france, germany, norway
Year: 2009
Running time: 90
IMDB: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0808506/
Bruce says: “At the 2008 Toronto International Film Festival filmmaker Bent Hamer introduced this film by quipping ‘My producers say my films are comedies. They are not.’ To placate Mr. Hamer I shall refer to his films as ‘droll dramas’ rather than comedies; I hope that will suffice.
“O’HORTEN is a small gem, a bittersweet character study. As the film begins, Odd Horten (Bård Owe) is making his penultimate run as engineer of a train. His route is a northern one, consisting of tunnel after tunnel cutting through mountains then opening to stark winter landscapes, and it is easy to grasp how the desolation of the environment impacts those who inhabit it. At home Horten carefully packs his sandwich tin and thermos and leaves his apartment with everything in perfect order. He lives alone. The train is ultramodern and he obviously delights in his work. The big worry is hitting a moose on the tracks and having to clear it away. When he arrives at the end of his run, he heads off to the pension where his female host (Henny Moan) has his dinner ready on the table. The way she looks at Horten we know she cooks for love not for money. That night is Horten’s retirement dinner, a drunken event that includes many tributes, the presentation of the Silver Locomotive commemorating his lengthy service, a silly quiz, and a rousing locomotive cheer during which all the attendees replicate the sound of an old steam engine in unison. Horten misses his last run because for the first time in his life he oversleeps.
“Odd Horten does not glide into retirement easily. The balance of the film is a series of wistful vignettes which serve to educate a man who for more than forty years has not paid much attention to the world that lies beyond his daily routine: visiting to his mother, a former ski jump champion, who now suffers from dementia; having meals at the local Valkyrian Restaurant where there is always an eccentric or two to entertain the other diners; selling his sailboat which he has held onto for years; making trips to the local tobacconist; and befriending a man who has appeared to slip on the ice.
“Like his earlier KITCHEN STORIES, director Hamer creates his own essay on Nordic life by examining the life of one or two characters. As pedestrian as O’HORTEN may sound, Hamer’s strength lies in the meticulous way he frames his shots and the ease with which he captures offbeat moments which are difficult to describe. Because Hamer sees life differently than the average man, he enriches life for the rest of us. Let’s hope there are many more droll dramas to come. 5 cats
“O’HORTEN screened at the 2008 Toronto International Film Festival”
Jason says: “O’ HORTEN is what one might call dry, if given to the same sort of understatement as the film itself. The ‘O’ stands for ‘Odd;’ that may be a relatively common name in Norway which has nothing to do with its meaning in English, but ‘odd’ describes the movie as well as anything else.
“Odd Horten (Bård Owe) has been a railroad engineer for nearly forty years, and looks like he could have another ten years of it in him, despite having reached the retirement age of 67. He’s a quiet man who lives in a small Oslo apartment near the train tracks, smokes a pipe, and stays in the same bed & breakfast owned by Svea (Henny Moan) in Bergen before making the return trip. Retirement finds him a bit adrift – he checks on his mother at the nursing home, sells his boat to his friend Flo (Bjørn Floberg), and frequently dines at the same restaurant. He meets a new friend in Trygve Sissener (Espen Skjønberg), who talks of his time as a diplomat in Africa and Indochina.
“Odd Horten may at times seem a passive character, and that is in some ways part of the point: He’s been content in his routine all his life, and doesn’t quite know what to do with himself now that it’s gone. It makes him a wonderful straight man, though; he reacts with a kind of bemused acceptance to the peculiar events around him, highlighting the strange within the ordinary and the ordinary within the strange. Owe is wonderful in the part – as one character points out, he bears his age well, although his face does have plenty of lines that come from experience. There’s hints of both formality and impishness to him; he can give off the air of a hesitant, guilty child at times.
“Indeed, for all the movie often feels like Odd reacting to strange things around him, he’s just as often put himself into those situations. There’s a lot of Jacques Tati’s M. Hulot to Odd, actually – the pipe, the lack of wasted words, the gentle physical comedy that plays out over a very episodic film. It’s an older version of the character, though, confronting not middle-aged confusion but elderly reality. As funny as most of the episodes are, there’s poignancy to many of them, too, as Odd confronts, either directly or by proxy, what it means to consider the time that lies both ahead of and behind someone his age.
“Interestingly, after the first episode or two, he doesn’t do it through comparison with the frivolous young. Most of the other characters in the movie are around Odd’s age, and the seasoned actors playing them are a joy to watch. Like Owe’s, Henny Moan’s face has the story of a lifetime written on it, and despite her Svea being in less than a handful of scenes, we feel like we know everything about it, especially a presumed longtime friendship with Odd. Espen Skjønberg is deadpan-funny as Trygve, perfectly communicating both the wonder of a grandiose life and the tragedy of how one’s flesh does, in fact, weaken before one’s spirit. Then there’s Ghita Nørby as the widow of Odd’s favorite tobacconist, whose time on screen is a perfect rendition of how old age can be a delicate balance of holding on and letting go.
“Writer/director Bent Hamer uses this to send Odd on a very specific kind of emotional journey (Up’s Pete Docter described his film as a ‘coming of old age’ story, and the term fits O’ HORTEN perfectly). He’s greatly aided by his setting – the film is set at winter, and presumably in part because of the long Scandinavian nights, much of the story takes place after sunset. There’s constant snow, and the trains plunge in and out of tunnels, both those dug through mountains and created by high snowbanks. It’s late, this says, although the landscape is dazzlingly bright and the days are beautiful. There’s a single shot of Bergen that only briefly comes into focus (perhaps Odd takes it for granted?) that makes me want to visit, a trick repeated later for Oslo at night.
“For all that potential melancholy, though, O’ HORTEN is a tremendously cheerful movie. The jokes are frequent and funny, tremendously droll. Odd and the rest of the characters are tremendously charming, and the message is ultimately pretty upbeat. It’s a real treat. 4 1/2 cats
“Seen 16 June 2009 at Landmark Kendall Square #9 (first-run)”
Diane says: “Vignettes, occasionally surreal, of a bachelor railway engineer’s life in retirement. Not ‘great’ like director Bent Hamer’s earlier KITCHEN STORIES, but the same quiet tone, hints of emotion (they _are_ Norwegian), and glowing cinematography (even though a different cinematographer). A man in the audience with me said Hamer made the banal beautiful. What can I say?–that just wasn’t enough for me last night. 3 cats”
Beth Caldwell says: “For your consideration: O’HORTEN was the most beautiful visually artistic film I’ve seen yet this year. I do wish we had an ‘artistic design’ category where this film would fit nicely, but alas, cinematography is the new ‘visual design’ of Chlotrudis Awards. Anyway, I’ll be nominating it for best cinematography and other categories, too.
The film was awesome. I give it 5 cats!”
Julie says: “O’HORTEN is by far my favorite film of the year (so far). Perfect in every way including the acting, characters, cinematography and music which were all seamlessly sewn together. Poignant character study of a Norwegian train engineer (Odd Horten, facing retirement after 40 years) and the people he comes into contact with.
“Having lived in Germany and traveled around Europe it all felt very real to me.
“I saw elements of SCHULTZE GETS THE BLUES and the memorable feel and look of the street light scene at the beginning and end of 12:08 EAST OF BUCHAREST. But it stands on it’s own as a very unique film and what I consider a perfectly made down to every last detail. 5 cats”