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O’ Horten (2008)

Director: Bent Hamer

Time Out rating

Average user rating

4 reviews

Movie review

From Time Out London

Leaving aside comedy dogs, one of the emerging themes of this year’s cinema is ageing – specifically the wit, wonder, sadness and humour that long experience brings with it. We’ve had Michael Caine as a conflicted old magician in ‘Is Anybody There?’ and soon to come is a vision of geriatric love in ‘Cloud 9’. But now we can enjoy Bård Owe (below) as Odd Horten, a 67-year-old Norwegian train driver who goes through a long, dark night of the soul in Oslo a few days after hanging up his timetable for the last time.

After attending a party at which his colleagues see him off by pretending to be steam engines and playing a game of ‘guess the platform announcement’, Horten settles into retirement by embarking on a mini-odyssey. He goes for a nighttime swim, sells his cherished boat, meets an intriguing stranger whose house, full of bric-à-brac, betrays a life spent working as a foreign diplomat. All the while, Horten remains a quizzical onlooker, interested but removed, engaged but almost speechless. His journey into a new stage of life is reflected in everything and everyone around him.

You may remember director Bent Hamer from his 2004 film, ‘Kitchen Stories’, and this tightly focused fable – essentially a road movie in one city – displays a similar eccentric touch, sly humour and quiet approach to male emotions. The lack of dialogue and careful tableaux (dark with splashes of colour, superbly lit) recall Aki Kaurismäki, while the flashes of daft, visual humour (a motorcyclist sliding down a hill moments after a warning of freezing rain) are worthy of Roy Andersson. Thoughtful, funny, slightly sad and superbly crafted.

Author: Dave Calhoun

Time Out London Issue 2020, May 7-13, 2009

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User reviews of this film

Tuna Sandwich said...

Posted on Nov 02 2009 07:25 Scandanavia is my favourite

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Banana said...

Posted on Nov 02 2009 07:24 Probably the greatest.

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L said...

Posted on Nov 02 2009 07:24 Best film in the world!

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Senora Tufinia said...

Posted on May 12 2009 01:19 What a disappointment! How can you even compare it to Roy Andersson or Kaurismaki? Just because you see some "weird" scandinavian characters in freezing cold going through their life with hardly any reaction to whats happening next to them, it doesnt mean this is yet another "dark humour scandinavian movie". No, it is not. Script is weak, acting is bad, situations are forced, the only really funny moments are all mentioned in the review, and at the end even the slight chance for a klimax is ruined by not showing a key element of a scene (budget problems??). Don't watch this film if you like real Scandinavian cinema. Go buy Adam's Apple instead.

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