O’Horten (Bent Hamer, 2007): Norway | Germany | France

Reviewed by Cora Hubbert. Viewed at the AFI Film Festival, ArcLight Hollywood.

As I watched O’Horten , I felt as though I understood the point of the film, but I was not the targeted audience.  I feel as though I might have appreciated the subtleties of the storyline more if I was much older (and possibly Norwegian?) but nevertheless I enjoyed the film.  It is a comedy about reaching retirement age and wondering if maybe you are senile or if the world is just a crazy place.  I couldn’t help but think how much my parents would have liked this movie.

The film tells a heartfelt and warmly amusing story while delivering the final message that it is never too late to start an adventure…a truth that I think too many people end up forgetting as they age.

Odd Horten (Baard Owe) is a train conductor who is a day away from his retirement after years of devoted service to the train station. As the date approaches, Odd realizes that he won’t know what to do with himself after his job has ended, and this is somewhat daunting. The movie is the story of his tentative steps in new found freedom, and a series of rather surreal encounters.  These encounters seem to wake Odd up from his strictly routined life.  He begins to take chances and is invigorated by the joy of the unexpected.  I found the whole thing to be very sweetly and touchingly told, a hopeful tale for the lonesome.  Baard Owe plays his part well, and I was a big fan of the film’s main character.  Odd is a straight-forward unfazed kind of guy who acts as though he wouldn’t take a lot of crap from anybody, but at the same time he is incredibly friendly and curious. He is very attached to his job because it is all he has known, but as the story progresses he becomes more and more open to new experiences and eventually casts off his train conductor image safety blanket, symbolized by the donning of a new jacket as a replacement for his leather conductor’s coat which he wears up until this time. The amazing shots of the Norwegian railway for the opening credits and sprinkled throughout the movie, along with a beautiful score which sets the light mood explain the overall feeling of the story.  As I watched the snowy train scenes I was thinking to myself that if sad music were playing, I would have been completely depressed, finding the landscape to be bleak and hopeless.  The music of the film however made you feel like things would be alright and the snow was beautiful rather than sinister; representing new beginnings rather than never-ending loneliness.  I think that reflects one of the morals of the story: the demeanor and outcomes of your situation depend completely on your perception of the world.

Overall, this is not a film for the ADD afflicted, the action, sex, and crime tale hungry-which would mean many kids under the age of 30, unless you happen to enjoy a calm and relatively slow feel good movie about a 67 year old boy.  I know I did.  It tells us all to seize the day, live right now, no matter how many birthdays we’ve had.