Posted by Tom Stockman in Comedy, Foreign, Review | 0 comments
Review: ‘O’Horten’
O’HORTEN is a deadpan comedy about an aging man from Norway directed by Bent Hamer that tries to find humor in its peculiar situations. It’s amiable enough and well-acted but all of its forced whimsy and self-conscious quirkiness doesn’t add up to much and I found it dull and forgettable.
O’HORTEN follows the story of a 60-ish fellow with the odd name of Odd Horten (Baard Owe) as he’s retiring from his life-long profession as an engineer with the Norwegian National Railway Company. A never-married, well-regarded company man, his job is all he’s lived for and he feels forced out of work by his age. His train-obsessed coworkers throw him a going away party where he receives a “Silver Locomotive” award and they all play an amusing game of “identify that train noise”. O’HORTEN follows Horten, lost without his daily routines, as he aimlessly meanders around his hometown, attempting to settle into this different type of lifestyle. He visits old friends, goes for a nude midnight swim and sells his beloved yacht. Something resembling a plot finally kicks in when Horten stumbles across a drunk in the street who turns out to be a retired foreign diplomat. The two briefly bond until Odd’s new friend tries to prove he can drive while blindfolded.
Since plot doesn’t count for much in O’HORTEN, the style takes over, and director Hamer has produced a quiet rumination on loneliness and growing old. Horten is a curious but removed observer, engaged but quiet and unreadable and Baard Owe is well-cast with his poker-face and little dialog. Unfortunately, the episodic design of Horten’s story means that it’s never a particularly compelling piece of storytelling. O’HORTEN pacing is relaxed to the point of inertia and this viewer found O’HORTEN a chore to endure. On the comedy spectrum, it’s the opposite of the broad raunchy films of Adam Sandler or Judd Apatow , a more precious Norwegian version of a Jim Jarmusch comedy with pauses and blackouts between scenes that give it a static sense of timing. I usually have more patience for this type of droll humor (Maybe it’s a cultural thing. I’m picturing audiences in Norway rolling in the aisles), but O’HORTON left me cold.
[Overall: 1 out of 5 stars]
